LW 466 – Law of the Workplace: Shepard’s Citation Service & Shepardizing Cases

LW 466 – Law of the Workplace

This guide was created to support students in LW 466 with their major research project. 

Shepard’s Citation Service & Shepardizing Cases

What is Shepardizing?

Shepardizing a case refers to using Sheaprd’s Citations (also known as a citator) to identify other cases or authorities that have discussed the case you are looking at. You can use the process of Shepardizing to determine your case’s current value as precedent. In other words, it can help you determine whether a case is still “good law.” 

Shepard’s Signal Indicators

Look for these signals to quickly determine whether your case is still “good law.” 

How do I Shepardize a Case? 

Searching for a Case

Start with a search from the homepage using the citation of the case.

Finding the Shepard’s Information

Your result for the case will look like this. Note the red warning sign next to the name of the case (in the red circle) – if I scroll over this, it will warn me that “negative treatment is indicated. 

Another useful option is the “View the top citing reference” in the blue circle above. This will take you to the most relevant citing case – in this case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 

In the green square above you can see a list of the various ways this case has been treated – warning, questioned, caution, positive, neutral, and cited by. Click on one of the options to see the relevant cases. 

To see a full Shepard’s Report for the case, click “Shepardize this document” in the orange circle. 

Looking at a Shepard’s Report

The Shepard’s Report will list the relevant cases that cite, overrule, call into question, or otherwise address your case. You can narrow the list of cases by using the filters in the green box above.

Note, you can also Shepardize any of the cases in your report by clicking the yellow triangle (or the blue stop sign with an A) next to the name of the case, as shown in the red circle above. 

When looking at your Shepard’s Report, you can see how each case has treated your case by looking beneath the name of the case. Above we can see how Gonzales v. Carhart treated our case, Roe v. Wade, by looking in the blue circle – we can see that it was cited by Gonzales, but also that it was “overruled in part.” You can see the relevant language, if applicable, beneath the bullet point for each treatment of the case. 

Lexis Guides & Tutorials

NexisUni Shepard’s guide from NorthCentral University