Law Subject Guide

What are looseleaf services?

Looseleaf services contain commentary on an area of law, including analysis of key legislative provisions and case extracts. Australian law looseleaf services are available in the below law databases; subject/topic coverage varies in each.

The advantages of looseleaf services are that they:

• assemble important information relevant to a field of law within the one product
• provide expert commentary or analysis of associated legal concepts and/or legislative provisions
• are regularly updated and
• include relevant legislation and key case law in full-text or extract format (or link to these primary sources within the same database).

Westlaw Australia

To view looseleaf service commentary titles from the Westlaw Australia homepage:

• select the Content type > Secondary Sources > Commentary to view an alphabetical list of included commentary products
• filter the list by topic area or jurisdiction using the options on the left-hand side

Click on a commentary product title to view the table of contents or select checkbox/es to search in those product/s using the global search above the list. View the below Westlaw Australia video for a demonstration of searching for commentary. 

Find and Annotate Commentary Publications - Westlaw (Australia) (Thomson Reuters, 2021) <https://support.thomsonreuters.com.au/product/new-westlaw-australia/video/find-and-annotate-commentary-publications-westlaw-australia-224>.

Lexis Advance

To view looseleaf service commentary titles from the Lexis Advance homepage:

• select View all AU publications in the Publications pod
• filter by the Content Type > AU Secondary Materials > Annotated Legislation
• click to view a title's table of contents, use the drop-down arrow to search in that title or access an advanced search.

When searching generally across all information in Lexis Advance, select the AU Secondary Materials tab in the results list and use the Content Type > Annotated Legislation filter on the left-hand side. Use Commentary for common law topics but note this includes results from the legal encyclopedia.

View the Lexis Advance Overview video [4:35] for help with searching in this database.

CCH iKnowConnect

The CCH database contains commentary for various areas of law such as contracts, torts, company law, conveyancing, employment law, family law, taxation, intellectual property, privacy etc. To find information:

• select a practice area using the briefcase icon on the left, then select commentary to browse topics
• search by keyword and use the results list filters for the practice area/s and content type > commentary.