LexisNexis offers full text, South African, legal and commercial information for students and lecturers.

1. University of the Western Cape
Introduction to Basic Search Skills -My
LexisNexis

2. My LexisNexis
• Offers full text, South African, legal and commercial information for students and
lecturers.
• Users can access major law reference works, indexes, law reports, individual acts, statutes,
practitioners manuals and textbooks.
• Subjects include labour law, financial planning and markets, income tax (includes Silke on
South African Income Tax), intellectual property, payroll, pension funds, taxation of
employees and VAT.

3. Access to the Library’s e-Resources from Off-Campus
 The EZproxy system will ask you to identify yourself as a UWC student.
 It will ask you for a username and password i.e. student number and ID number for South Africans.
 For passwords, first time students will use !St followed by their IDnr.
 Foreign students can use their date of birth as a password. Date of birth starting with the year,
then month and lastly day.
 If your month or day is a single digit, you must add a 0 in front e.g. January = 0

4. Credentials
• Library Login Credentials
• What credentials should I use in order to logon to my UWC library account, or to sign into EZproxy when trying to access online
journals from off campus.
• New Students
• 1st time and First Year UWC students, including students who have been assigned new student numbers when registering for the
2021 academic year.
• Username: student number e.g. 4112117
• Password (Should contain the prefix !St followed by your ID, or passport number if you’re an international student)

5. Credentials…
• Returning Students
• Username: student number e.g. 4112117
• Password (ID number or passport number for international
students)
• Staff
• Username: initial and surname e.g. jjones
• Password (the network password that you’ve been using)
• Changing your Password
• If your password doesn’t work or if you need to change it for
whatever reason. You can do so at the following website.
• https://mypassword.uwc.ac.za
• Problems changing your Password
• If you experience problems resetting your password, you can contact
the ICS service desk via email at servicedesk@uwc.ac.za (telephone
number: 959 2000). Request that the call centre agent assist you in
resetting your network password.
• NB: Changing your password will change your password for all of the
following accounts that you may use; iKamva.uwc.ac.za, uKwazi library
account, EZproxy, VPN, Intranet

6. How to Access the My LexisNexis database
Go to the library’s homepage by using the URL - http://lib.uwc.ac.za/ . Click on the
Databases tab in the middle of the page. You can either select A-Z Databases or
Databases by Discipline.

7. Click on the A-Z Databases and select “M” for “My LexisNexis”

8. On the left hand side you will see “My LexisNexis.” Select the off-campus login link.
Check the username = westerncape and password=university - westerncape is one word
with no capital letters

9. You have to sign in to get access to this database.

10. There are three ways to navigate the Lexis Library content:
1. By navigating the Table of Contents on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. Using the General Text Search field at the top of the screen.
3. Using the Advanced Search to conduct an Advanced, Law Report, Legislation or Gazettes Search.
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11. Table of Contents (ToC)
• The table of contents, located on the left of the screen,
contains all the resources we subscribed to in a condensed
list.
• A down arrow alongside an item indicates that the list is
collapsed, selecting the down arrow will expand the list.
Conversely an up arrow indicates that the list is expanded and
selecting the up arrow will collapse the list.
• Clicking on the red Table of Contents button in the middle of
the screen will either collapse or expand the Table of
contents. You can also increase the width of the ToC by
dragging its associated scrollbar horizontally across the
screen.
• When you use the General Search in the top menu bar (ie. not
the ToC search) you are able to limit your search to particular
publications or portions of publications by ticking the boxes
that appear next to them in the ToC.
• For example, if you are searching for a topic in a particular
textbook you would tick the box next to that textbook and
then enter the topic into the search field.
• Once you have made a selection, you can
change what you have selected by
clicking on the tick box again to remove
that item from the selection, or you can
select “clear” at the top of the ToC to
remove all selections.
• From the ToC you can also download
documents that you have selected by
clicking the save icon (the computer
disk icon) within the ToC. This can be in
either .pdf or .rtf formats.
• You can also email your selection from
the ToC by clicking the envelope icon.
• View selection is a tool that gives you
the ability to create customised
documents from any documents in the
ToC. It takes all the documents which
you have selected and joins them
together into one, which you can then
download, print or email.

12. In the Table of Content you can either select the Research Areas or the Content Types.
In the Research Areas the content is group together as per subject. But we will be
working in the Content Types.

13. Searching the Table of Content
 When you use the Table of Content Search field you are
able to limit your search to particular publications.
 In the TOC you will find Legislation, Gazettes, Cases,
Commentary, Journals, etc.
 Commentary is where you will find eBooks.

14. Worked Example in LAWSA
This is a demonstration of how to find the volume in the publication, “The Law of South Africa (LAWSA)” dealing with Arbitration, and the definition of
Arbitration in that volume, using the ToC to navigate through the Library content.
1. Click on the down arrow next to LAWSA
2. Click or expand The Law of South Africa (LAWSA) in the ToC
3. Click on Arbitration in the ToC or your workspace
4. Click on Introduction to display the Definition of Arbitration
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15. Using the General Text Search field at the top of the screen.
Click on All Content and select Case Law and put in your keywords in the Search Query
Box.

16. If you do a search by using All Content, you can change your results by changing the
Document Type on the left hand side.

17. Four types of searches under Advanced
Search:
1. All Content – search across everything
2. Cases – specific case search
3. Legislation – specific Acts search
4. Gazettes Online – specific Government
Gazette search

18. You can also make use of the “Boolean” operators. Boolean operators are the words
"AND", "OR" and "NOT". When used in library databases (typed between your keywords)
they can make each search more precise - and save you time!

19. Searching for Case Law
Click on advanced search and then advanced search to
access one convenient search form with several options.
A law reports publication for South Africa is listed under
the heading Cases.
Then select Cases at the top of the screen.
Once cases are selected it is automatically underlined in red
to show you where you are to the right of the form.
You can select and deselect specific law report series you'd
like to search from.
You can search using case name, citation, keywords, court
division, judge, case, year, and case number depending on
the information you have available to you.
Should you only have topics or keywords then scroll down
and complete any of the fields as shown.
Once complete click the search button to the bottom right
and this will run your search through the database.

20. Here is an example using the case name type in Gaertner and Others v
Minister of Finance and Others. Click the search button to the bottom
right.

21. There are two search results that have been found.
Notice the green signal indicator that shows the cases set a precedent.
Several search filters appear on the left of this results page that assists to narrow the search results.
Relevance or chronological will rearrange the results by the number of hits or by the date order.
When select chronological the latest case moves to the top of the list.
The second case listed has been heard at the Western Cape High Court and the citation is per the print law report series.

22. Click on the result to view the screen automatically splits
case law on the left and legal citation analysis to the right.
If the case law is the same as in the print publications’, the
legal site header screen repeats the signal indicator and
the analysis contains headings such as judgment details
subject index, and judgment treatment.
Click on each heading to view the content notice.
The icons at the top of the screen the document options
drop-down list have saved document to client folder,
download current selection, with a choice of either word or
PDF format and print document alongside is the envelope
icon which is the email option that allows you to email either
a word or a PDF file.

23. Tabs
• You will notice that each new page that you open will be opened in a new tab in your workspace.
• This allows you to have many pages open at once and to move between them without having to re-open documents that you
have already found. Please note that you should not use the back or previous arrow feature on your browser to move to a
previous page on Lexis Library as anything you open will be in its own tab within Lexis Library and you can navigate between
them by clicking on the applicable tab.
• You can close any tabs that you have opened, or view those which have been hidden (where you have opened more than the
screen can accommodate) by clicking on the down arrow and selecting a particular tab you wish to close. You may select to
“Close All” or “Close All But Current” – which closes all tabs other than the one you’re on.

24. General Features
There are several features that are available for any document you view and they appear just above the document on the left of the
task bar.
These allow you to:
• Save the document to a client folder previously created by you
• Download to your computer or other location in .pdf or .rtf formats
• Print the document as a PDF
• Email
• Display the publication details of the document
• Move to the next or previous page of the publication
• Create a permalink to that document (this creates an address for the document you are viewing and allows you to insert this
as a link into a document outside of LexisLibrary which, when accessed, will return you to the document of origin within
LexisLibrary).
This is an example of what the permalink will look like in your document:
http://www.mylexisnexis.co.za/Index.aspx?permalink=WzIwMTNdIDMgQWxsIFNBIGF0IFBhZ2UgMjUwJDUzMzY0OTMkNyRM
aWJyYXJ5JEpEJExpYnJhcnk
Sync contents will indicate the ToC structure of any document that you are presently viewing in the document pane. So, for example, if
you have followed a hyperlink from one document to another you can sync the contents of that second document to access the
remainder of the publication in the ToC.

25. Publication details will be displayed for Referencing purposes.

26. Searching for a case using the Table of Contents
• Searching using the Table of Contents (please note that although this example is
provided specifically within a search for Law Reports, the method for navigating the
website is the same for all content types).
• Under Table of Contents, you can either click on the plus sign next to the item of your
choice which will expand the list that sits under that heading within the ToC, or you can
click on the actual word in the ToC which will both expand the list in the ToC and open
it in your workspace

27. For this example we’ll be locating Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA and another v Premier of KwaZulu-Natal and others [2009] 2 All SA 293 (D).
1. In the Table of Contents, scroll down until you find Cases and expand the node.
2. Expand the All South African Law Reports node.
3. Click on 1996 to 2016. This will open three items: Consolidated Indexes, Law Reports and Advance Law reports. The Law Reports link contains a
chronological listing of cases.
4. Click on Consolidated indexes.
5. Click on Cases Reported. This will open an alphabetical list of cases.
6. Click on A.
7. Select the hyperlinked citation of Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA and another v Premier of KwaZulu-Natal and others [2009] 2 All SA 293 (D).
This will take you to the reported judgment.
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28. Creating Folders
• Within My Workspace you can create personal research folders in
which you can save documents from LexisNexis.
• The advantage of doing this, in comparison to downloading to your
computer, is that any information saved in this way is automatically
updated in LexisNexis thus ensuring that should the information
change it is always available to you in its most current form.

29. Create a Research Folder
1. Click on the Folders button. Then click on the Create button and type a name for your client
(replacing the “New Client” text), and press Enter.
2. Click on the down arrow next to the newly created client and click on Folders. Click Create,
type a name for the folder, and press Enter.

30. Save Document to a Folder
• Click on the folder drop-down in the toolbar and then click Save document to client folder.
• This will open the Save document reference to a client folder window.
• Type in a recognisable Title, choose the Client, select a Folder, and click on the Save button.

31. To access the document again, just click on Folders and choose the
relevant folder and document. Should you want to delete the saved
document from the folder at any stage, click on the red X that appears to
the right of the document name.

32. Adding Annotations
• Notes allow you to add annotations to documents and save them for viewing later. When you want to
make a note in a document that you are viewing, highlight that portion, once you release the mouse
button four options will appear: Note, Highlight, Search and Definition.
• Once you have highlighted your selection, click Note and enter the annotation that you want to add in
the text box that appears, then click Save. You can also select a colour to be applied to your highlighted
selection from those that appear in the bottom left corner of the text box.

33. To view the note later you just have to hover over the highlighted text to view, edit or remove your note.
Notes and highlights are also saved for viewing from the Notes button in the task bar at the top of the
screen.
The remaining options that appear when you highlight text in a document are:
• Search which will run a general text search for the words that you have selected
• Definition which provides you with the dictionary meaning of the word or phrase selected

34. Further Options to Analyse a Case
If you are looking for more information to analyse a case you can expand the dual view display by selecting the << icon. You
can also collapse the dual view completely and just view the resource without the Legal Citator by clicking on the X icon on
the far right of the Legal Citator. Clicking on CiteIt will restore the dual view display. This allows you to access the
judgment analysis page for the case or other resource you are dealing with within the Legal Citator.

35. Legal Citator
The Legal Citator is a research tool pertaining to case law which identifies references between
cases and references by cases to legislation, rules and regulations
To access the
Legal Citator

36. The Citator works by using a series of coloured signals to show you the current precedential status
of a case. The signals are:
Green for positive (indicating that a case has been received strong positive analysis by
another court)
Blue for neutral (indicating that the case has been referenced by another court, or courts,
but that the reference was neither positive or negative)
White for no references (indicates that the case has not been referenced)
Yellow for cautionary (the case may not be correct in its interpretation)
Red for negative (indicating that a case has been received strong negative analysis by
another court).

37. Once you have located a case that you want to view, you will reach the judgment
analysis screen which contains various drop down menu options.
Judgment Details provides you with a summary of specific aspect of the case, the
dates of hearing and judgment, bench (the number of judges and whether there
was a minority decision), the identities of the parties and the representatives
appearing for the parties, the division and jurisdiction of the court hearing the
matter.
Subject Index indicates the subject matter the court dealt with.
Judgment History allows you to see if a case has been taken on appeal and what
the result was. It also allows you to see if there was more than one appeal and so
gives you the entire appellate history. Please bear in mind that for a case to
appear in the Legal Citator at all it must have been published in one of the law
reports series canvassed. Thus, for example, only the Case History as published in
the law reports will refl ect in the Case History.
Judgment Treatment is a list of all the cases that were heard after this case and
that have discussed the case in their judgments. Each of these cases will have a
signal next to them, indicating what their treatment of the current case was. This
particular case has a neutral blue signal, indicating that it has been referenced by
at least one other court but has neither been approved or overruled. If you want
to see whether the case that has referenced the case you are looking at is itself a
strong case, you can view its treatment by clicking View Underpinnings; this will
tell you how much weight to give that case’s view of your case.
Judgments Cited by Court provides a list of the cases which the court
referenced, with signals and editorial assignments indicating the type and strength
of reference.
Acts, Ordinances & By-Laws provides a list of the legislative instruments which
the court referenced.
Rules provides a list of the rules which the court made reference to.
Regulations provides a list of the regulations which the court made reference to.

38. Remember! Example of Case:

39. Faculty Librarian
Grace Van Niekerk
gvanniekerk@uwc.ac.za
Thank you