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How to Shepardize

Why Shepardize?

You never want to find yourself arguing passionately before a judge only to have her admonish you that you’re relying on cases that have already been overruled!
- To make sure this never happens to you, Shepardize every case that you cite in your memos and briefs. You can also Shepardize your opponent’s cases. If you catch them citing bad law, you may have just won your case.
Shepard’s can be used to find out how all the ways that other cases have dealt with your case or statute. Shepardizing your case will show you:
- Cases that followed the rule of law set out in your case.
- Cases that are distinguishable on the facts from your case.
- Cases that criticize your case.
- Cases that reverse your case or overturn a point of law from your case.

To find out how other cases have dealt with your case: Go to lexisnexis.com/lawschool. Type in your ID and password.

Click on the “Shepard’s” tab. Make Sure you are on the red Shepard’s tab as well. Type the citation for the case that you want to Shepardize in the text box. Click on the radioed button “Shepard’s for Validation.” Click on the red button “Check.”

The next screen is the Shepard’s Full Summary Box. At the top and on the left you will see one of the Shepard’s status signals. You can find a chart explaining what each of the signals means by scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Negative treatment may or may not mean that you can use the case.

The classifications are made by humans (who sometimes make mistakes). You should read the case for yourself just to make sure.

Just because a case has a stop sign, doesn’t mean that the particular point of law for which you are using the case has been reversed. The court may have overruled your case on a completely different point of law, but affirmed or agreed with the point of law that you are concerned about.

If the court hasn’t overturned your point of law, you can still use the case.

To determine whether a case dealt with the particular point of law that you are concerned about, click on the hyperlinked case name and then read the case in it’s entirety to determine whether your particular pointof law has been overturned. Lexis will take you directly to the part of the opinion that references your case, highlighted in yellow. You can read that section of the opinion to determine how it affects your case.

Shepard’s results will also list secondary sources that have dealt with your case, but remember that it will only list secondary sources that are available on Lexis. You can also focus the Shepard’s results according to your needs.

If you only want to know whether your case is good law, you can click on the hyperlinked text “All Neg” at the top of the page to view the authorities that treat your case negatively.

If you want to know how other cases have applied your case positively, you can click on the hyperlinked text “All Pos” at the top of the page.

You can also click on the hyperlinked text “FOCUS – Restrict by” which will lead you to a custom search page where you can more narrowly tailor your search.

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