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Westlaw New Zealand - User preferences 

Your user preferences allow you to change options such as time zone, search results, and formatting for printed/downloaded/emailed documents. 

To access preferences, at the top of the homepage

  1. Click the user icon 
  2. Select preferences. 

Profile 

Update your time zone, preferred jurisdictions, and homepage content. 

  1. Time zone – Change the time zone to your local GMT. 
  2. Jurisdiction – Limit your search results to national and/or international jurisdictions. 
  3. Edit home page – Choose to display or hide News headlines.

Search 

Change your search options, display, and sort order. 

  1. Terms and Connectors search – choose to run searches with AND, OR, &, or "quotation marks" as advanced searches 
  2. Document display – show or hide highlighting of search terms in documents 
  3. Result list snippets – show more words before and after relevant highlighted search terms in the result list, e.g., an additional 20, 30, or 40 words on either side of your keywords 
  4. Default sort order – change the way different content types are sorted, e.g., Relevance, Date, Court, Table of Contents 

History 

  1. Session summary – Choose to automatically email your session summary when signing out of Westlaw 
  2. Add your email address, there is an option to add multiple email addresses
  3. Select the attachments’ format: Word, RTF, WordPerfect, or PDF  

 

 

Notifications

You can modify your notification preferences.

  1. Select the preferred notification method- Display Icon and Pop-up, display icon only or select Mute all notifications.
  2. Choose what shared content you would like to be notified about- For example, when documents are added to a shared folder.
  3. Set what type up Alerts you wish to to be notified about.

Features 

Show or hide relevant features in your search results. 

  • Best portion – Find relevant sentences in your document based on search term density and frequency. 
  • Law summaries – See common legal questions as you type in the search bar and summaries or specific passages that relate to those questions above your results list. 

Delivery 

Choose default delivery formatting, layout and style, and inclusions. 

  • Document format – RTF, Word, PDF, WordPerfect 
  • Multiple documents – Single merged file, multiple files (zip folder) 
  • Dual column layout for cases – Display cases with a dual column layout 
  • Footnotes – Inline or end of document 
  • Link colour – Blue or black 
  • Font size – Normal, large, and/or underlined 
  • Inclusions: 
  • Legislation text only for Legislation 
  • Only pages with terms 
  • Corresponding document with KeyCite lists 
  • Term highlighting 
  • KeyCite treatment – include negative treatments 
  • Original image and other version links – court-ready documents 
  • Expanded margin for notes 
  • Add a cover page to each request 
  • Headnotes 
  • Show full Key Number hierarchy

Help 

Choose whether to show or hide keyboard instructions. 

  • Show or hide keyboard instructions – these tell you how to navigate through Westlaw New Zealand with your keyboard instead of your mouse. Keyboard instructions can be found by tabbing through the homepage. 

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Legal aid stats — COVID-19 dip in latest data

Content updates

As noted in Legal Services on Westlaw New Zealand, the latest "justice statistics" from the Ministry of Justice (updated every six months and now covering July 2012 to June 2022) indicate a decrease in legal aid grants/expenditure in the 2021/2022 financial year compared to 2020/2021.

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Supreme Court of New Zealand - recent judgments: September 2022

Content updates

A summary of decisions delivered in September 2022 by the Supreme Court, available on Westlaw New Zealand.

Date & Time
Westlaw New Zealand - Sentencing Tracker Analytics Recorded Webinar (12:50mins)

This recorded webinar outlines how to use the Sentencing Tracker Analytics in Westlaw New Zealand to access specialised case summaries based on the type of offence, key sentencing factors, as well as...

Case law

Trusts Act 2019 commentary – you are not alone anymore

Content updates

Since 2021, when the new Trusts Act 2019 came into force, Family Property has been sending forth veritable doorstop-sized updates filled with fresh new commentary on every section of the new Trusts Act.

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New IP and corporate insolvency resources now available on Practical Law New Zealand

Content updates
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Legal aid current awareness — one web page to rule them all

Content updates

If you want to know what's happening with legal aid in New Zealand, the Current Awareness page in Legal Services on Westlaw New Zealand provides a handy list of recent developments and points the way to further information.

Date & Time