Colorado Law and Legal Research

Finding Statutes in Print

To find a statute by topic in either print set, researchers should begin in the index volumes, which are located at the end of the set. There are several ways to use the index:
 

• Researchers can look up the subject in the A to Z section.
• Researchers can use the Words and Phrases section towards the back of the index to look up common English words and find the corresponding code section(s) which deals with that issue.
• Researchers can look up a statute's popular name or short title in the short title and popular names section of the index.
• Researchers can use the comparative tables section of the index to translate the citation from an older numbering system to the current citation.

Finding Statutes Online

Searching for statutes in one of the electronic versions is very different than it is in the print sets. 

In the free online version provided by LexisNexis researchers can browse the Table of Contents for statutes or they can search by keyword. The statutes are codified by subject, so researchers can browse each title of the statutes to find statutes within that section. To search by keyword, researchers can choose to conduct a "natural language" search, which is similar to a Google type search. Otherwise, researchers can conduct a "terms and connectors" search by clicking on the "Search Tips" link which allows researchers to set the search parameters using different connectors between terms.








Westlaw provides access to West's Colorado Revised Statutes Annotated and also allows researchers to browse the Titles and Articles for statutes or to run a keyword search. In Westlaw, the default search is a natural language search and researchers can set search parameters by choosing the "advanced" search option. Westlaw also makes it easy for researchers to narrow their results by different factors in the results display.