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Consumer Protection Law: BL/LX+/WL

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Because consumer protection law encompasses a broad array of laws, regulatory schemes, and topical areas of practice, when using the major legal research platforms (Bloomberg Law, Lexis+, and Westlaw), try these strategies to focus your research:

  • try specific collections of topical materials for focused searches, rather than simply searching from the front-page search box
  • use annotated statutes and regulations on LX+ and WL if you have a code section or regulation to start from
  • use citator features on WL and LX+ to expand from a starting point (a case or law review article) to find others on similar topics

Berkeley Law students have school-sponsored access to all three services (see the registration info in the Student Computing Guide), and each service varies in coverage—so explore them all while you have sponsored access!

Topical Collections for Consumer Law

Bloomberg Law

Practice Centers

  • search (e.g., "consumer protection" AND appliance) from related topical Practice Centers for Antitrust ... Banking & Finance ... Privacy & Data Security
  • look for Practice Center tools like Trackers (e.g., CFPB Enforcement Tracker), Chart Builders (e.g., State Data Breach Notification Requirements)

Lexis+

Content tab

Practice Area tab

Topics tab

Practical Guidance (log in to Lexis+ and go to Practical Guidance Home)

Overviews, checklists, practice notes, drafting aids: search from Practical Guidance Home page or narrow down to consumer law topical areas such as Financial Services Regulation > Consumer Financial Services Regulation ... Civil Litigation > Class Actions and Multidistrict Litigation

Westlaw

Content Types tab > Administrative Decisions & Guidance

Practice Areas tab

Practical Law

Practice notes, checklists and toolkits, drafting aids (standard documents and clauses): search from Practical Law US Home, or select from Practice Areas tab (e.g., Data Privacy & Cybersecurity ... Litigation > Class Actions)

Expanding from One Good Law/One Good Case

Starting from a specific statute or federal regulation

Find case law that interprets, applies, explains, or otherwise discusses the law by looking at the annotated code on Lexis+ or Westlaw:

  • look up a state or federal statutory code provision by citation and find associated case citations—
    • in Lexis+, move the vertical slider to Annotations, look for Notes to Decisions (editorial analysis and summary of case holdings, organized into a topical outline); or go to the Citing Decisions tab (cases that cite the statute, but not summarized or organized by topic)
    • in Westlaw, click on the tab for Notes of Decisions (editorial analysis and summary of case holdings, organized into a topical outline); or go to the Citing References tab and filter for Content: Cases (cases that cite the statute, but not summarized or organized by topic)
  • similarly, look up a C.F.R. provision and and find associated case citations (some state regulations may have Citing References, but currently there are no consistently case-annotated state regulations on LX+ or WL)

Starting from a specific case

When  you have a case that is on point, especially if it has relevant headnotes, you can expand to find more cases on the same or similar topics using the citator methods discussed in the 1L Research Guide (including some tutorials).

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