Research Tip: Printing Just the Statute

When you retrieve a statute on Westlaw or LexisNexis, you get not only the statute, but also all the annotations added by the company. The annotations are helpful for expanding your research, but they can add many pages to your print job. Follow the instructions below to print a statute without the annotations.

On Westlaw, to print just the statute itself you must limit the display before you go to the print options. In the lower right corner, click on Tools and select Limit Display by Fields. To print a statute without annotations, click in the box to the left of Substantive-Doc and then click on the OK button at the bottom of the screen.

On LexisNexis, you can either customize the document view and then print, or go into print and then customize the view. To customize the document view before printing, click on Custom in the upper left corner. To print a statute without annotations, clear all the checkboxes except the box for the Unanno segment and click on the OK button. If you go into the LexisNexis print options first, choose Custom from the Document View drop-down menu and select the segments to be printed.

See also Searching Just the Text of Statutes.