Tips Tuesday: Use the Canadian Abridgment to Find Similar Cases

You’ve identified a useful case for your research, but how do you find cases that are similar to that case?

One option is looking at the case in Westlaw Canada, seeing what Canadian Abridgment Digests classifications the case has been assigned to (these are found on the right hand side), and then looking at what other cases fall under those classifications. (Obviously you only want to click on classifications that are relevant your particular interest in the case.) 

Alternatively, you can search the Canadian Abridgment for your keywords and then limit by the classifications (found on the left hand side). The advantage of this is that you are searching text that is only found in the summary rather than in the full text of the document, so it significantly reduces the number of irrelevant cases. Keep in mind that Canadian Abridgment results don’t turn up in the general Westlaw Canada search, so you have to go specifically into the Abridgment.

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