Westlaw Finding Tips

Finding securities documents can be difficult. We at West have not always been hep to this particular facet of the job. Recently however, we've cobbled together a much improved collection of finding aids for securities types. Some are obvious enough (Find a No-action Letter, for instance). I won't bother with them. I will try to point out a couple you may have missed.

* You need to go directly to the beginning of Regulation S-K:
the Tables of Contents pull-down (well pull-up, actually) on the Securities Practitioner Tab links directly to the TOC for the CFR or the USCA.



* You need to find SAB 99. This is two tips, actually. First, if you enter "release-no" followed by a release number in the find box you can retrieve any SEC release. Second, if you append "SAB No __" after the release code you can use Find to pull a Staff Accounting Bulletin (you knew what SAB meant, right?) So, "release-no SAB No 99," retrieves SAB 99. That's almost simple, isn't it?



* You need to find SEC Rule of Practice 402. The SEC Rules of Practice are probably the most exotic thing that can be accessed through the Find a Securities Document link on the Securities Practitioner Tab. The templates on this link ask for common citations instead of the USCA and CFR citations.