Last Updated: 14 Dec, 2021     Views: 269

New WestLaw (via SSO)

  1. Find the item in Westlaw
  2. Articles are normally under secondary Sources (left nav bar)
  3. Click the Copy link button (top right)
    This link will take users to WestLaw's authentication page, where they can choose 'Access through Australian Academic Institiution' and then select James Cook University, which auth them against ForgeRock and take them to the link - but...
  4. You can automate those authentication steps by pasting the link on the end of this string

    https://signon.thomsonreuters.com/federation/AAF?entityID=https://idp.jcu.edu.au/idp/shibboleth&returnto=

    Which tells WestLaw the address of our identity provider and the URL to go to after authentication is complete, e.g.

    https://signon.thomsonreuters.com/federation/AAF?entityID=https://idp.jcu.edu.au/idp/shibboleth&returnto=https://anzlaw.thomsonreuters.com/Document/I749913e8683711ea9466e69956ff701d/View/FullText.html?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)&VR=3.0&RS=cblt1.0

 

If your audience is not necessarily a JCU person you can just use the copied link and hope the user knows what to do to authenticate (and their institution has provided them access).

 

Old WestLaw (via EZproxy

WestLaw has long URLs that track your session behaviour and a simple copy paste will result in an error.

The trick is to:

  1. Locate the item in WestLaw
  2. Copy the URL up to and including the value for docguid i.e. everything to the right of (and including) the & at the end of the docguid value is removed (in this example the red bit) so that:
    https://www-westlaw-com-au.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/maf/wlau/app/document?docguid=I39a361e3cfd411e08eefa443f89988a0&isTocNav=&tocDs=&startChunk=1&endChunk=1
    Becomes
    https://www-westlaw-com-au.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/maf/wlau/app/document?docguid=I39a361e3cfd411e08eefa443f89988a0
  3. Format the remainder as valid starting point URL i.e.:
    http://elibrary.jcu.edu.au/login?url=https://www.westlaw.com.au/maf/wlau/app/document?&src=search&docguid=I39a361e3cfd411e08eefa443f89988a0