Researching Case Law

KeyCite (Westlaw Australia)

KeyCite is a legal research product, accessed via Westlaw Australia, which helps you find information about Australian case law. Westlaw Australia contains full-text unreported judgments from Australian courts and tribunals as well as Australian authorised law reports.

With KeyCite you can:

• retrieve a case on a specific topic or point of law using the Key Number system
• determine whether a case has been reported in an authorised law report
• use KeyCite Alert to track for any subsequent considerations of a case
• view relevant case details such as judges, date of judgment, digest notes for some cases, catchwords, litigation history, cases considered, cases citing, legislation judicially considered and words and phrases judicially considered.

Accessing Westlaw Australia

Access to the Westlaw Australia subscription database is via a single sign-on system. This means that it recognises users as individual Deakin users.

1. Go to the Westlaw Australia database homepage via the Library A-Z databases.
2. If this is the first time that you are accessing Westlaw Australia and you see the below Microsoft sign in screen, enter your @deakin email address and click on Next.
   NOTE: Do not create a login, or use a personal Microsoft or gmail email, or your mobile phone number.
   
    
3. You will then be redirected to the usual Deakin Single Sign on screen. Enter your Deakin login credentials at this point and it will take you through to the Westlaw Australia database.

You should only need to do this process once, or if you clear your Internet browser's history or cache.

Searching for a known case in Westlaw Australia

To get started using KeyCite, you need to find the case record for your case. In this example, we are looking for a known case: Telebooth Pty Ltd v Telstra Corporation Ltd [1994] 1 VR 337.

1. Go to the Westlaw Australia database homepage via the Library A-Z Databases.
2. Type in the case citation in the Search box.

Or, if you do not know the law report citation, or the unreported judgment medium neutral citation, then start typing in the name of the case in the Search Box:

3. Click on the Case Name to open the full-text case record for that case.

Viewing the full-text of a Westlaw Australia case record

The full-text case record will give you a digest of what the case is about and the West Key Number System topics.

Beneath the digest information, under the Opinion heading is the full-text judgment of the case.

Downloading a law report version or an unreported full-text judgment

Law report version

To download a full-text of a case, first check if it has been reported in a law report. For our example case of Telebooth Pty Ltd v Telstra Corporation Ltd [1994] 1 VR 337, it has been reported in the law reports called Victorian Reports. There are three steps to downloading:

1. From the full-text case record, click on View Reported Versions found under the blue Brief It box.  
2. Select the most authoritative version from the drop-down options.

3. Click on the PDF icon now found under the blue Brief It box.  Download or print the original format of the law report.

Note

See the Law Reports & Unreported Judgments tab on this guide for more information about the importance of using authorised law report versions.

 

Unreported full-text judgment

1. From the full-text case record, click on the Delivery menu.
2. Choose to either Email, Print, or Download.

 

Annotate & create alerts

You can create annotations to a case, save a case to a folder, and create alerts within Westlaw Australia. For more information on how to annotate and create alerts see the Westlaw (Australia) Guides & Tips for Case Law.

 

Tip

Keep in mind that the Copy Citation option under Copy Link is not AGLC4 compliant.

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Viewing a KeyCite Citing References list in Westlaw Australia

1. From the full-text Document page for the case, navigate to the Citing References tab and select either the Cases or Secondary Sources link. The Cases link will retrieve cases which have cited this case, the Secondary Sources link will retrieve journal articles or books that have discussed this case.

2. Click on the + icons below to view the key components of this Citing References (Case) record example.