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Usually when you are searching for legislation you know the name of the act

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So go to legislation and legislation search

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Type the name into the title box

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Autocomplete will start to give you suggestions. Just watch

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that you pick the right one. You can see there's an awful lot of acts

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with very similar titles. I know I am looking for the 1995 Act.

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Then just hit return. Because we are looking for a specific act

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we are only getting one result. Just click on that 

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and it will open up the legislation for me. This is called the arrangement of the act

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So if you can think of these like separate chapters. These are the

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different parts and sections. You can see at a glance 

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whether a section is in force. Just hover over and you will get the icon coming

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up. It will tell you what it is. Not yet in force, partially in force

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awaiting amendments, repealed

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If you click into the section you'll get details

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of what that's been replaced by if it's been repealed.

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There is lots of really useful information on this page. Westlaw 

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is not just about the actual legislation, the actual text. It's all the additional information 

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and that additional information can make it so much easier for you to understand

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legislation. As  forensic investigation students there's a couple of 

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key things you will need to be aware of. So the first thing

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you need to know the extent of an act or a section of an act.

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The extent is whether the act applies to Scotland

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or England and Wales, or Scotland, England and Wales or Northern Ireland

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so it's all about the jurisdiction. So if you look in preamble and provision details

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That is where you'll see the extent and it's the same for 

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each section of the act. So if I go back to the 

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arrangement of the act and look in another section

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provision details on the left hand side

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Extent.

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Back to the arrangement of the act. The next thing to be aware of if which version you are looking

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at. So let's have a look at a section

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when you click into the section on the right hand side you can see

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which version you are looking at. It will default to the most recent version

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Underneath I can see the previous versions

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and the dates that they were in force. So it's very easy to 

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jump to a previous version or to compare versions.

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It will give you a side by side comparison.

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The final thing it is worth pointing out are the links to primary references

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and commentary references. So primary references, so that's

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cases which cite

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this section of the act. So it's a really quick way of making links between the

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case law and legislation and also being able to understand how

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the legislation is being interpreted. Commentary references 

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are links to books or journal articles, any commentary

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which discusses this particular section.  So again that's a way of extending your knowledge

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and understanding of the legislation and how it is being used. 

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Searching for legislation on Westlaw is very straight forward and there is lots of added 

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value there to help you understand what it is you are reading

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Key things are. Make sure you are looking at the correct act

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a lot of the names are very similar. Be aware of the extent of the act 

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whether it applies to Scotland. Use the icons so that you are aware

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of what's in force, what's been repealed, what's awaiting 

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amendments. It's very easy to be able to jump between different versions of an act

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and finally to help you understand the legislation

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and how it is being interpreted use the primary references links

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that link to relevant case law and also any of the commentary links as well.

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[Thanks for watching. Email your subject librarian.  ALC lib-alc@gcu.ac.uk; GSBS lib-gsbs@gcu.ac.uk; SCEBE lib-scebe@gcu.ac.uk;

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HLS lib-hls@gcu.ac.uk; U2B lib.u2b@gcu.ac.uk]