House and Senate Reports on Lexis

If you're working on cite checking a brief, and you come across a citation to a House or Senate Report you may run into a little trouble if the report dates from 1980 or earlier. A common citations for more recent Congressional reports, such House Report No. 107-131, will come up nice and easy, just like the cites for any legal reporter. Lexis does not have full text records for House and Senate reports in its regular database for the 96th Congress, and all earlier Congresses. (The 96th Congress dated from January 3, 1979 to January 3, 1980). You can however access scanned images of the reports by following these steps.

On the Lexis Advance home page search for, 'Congressional Documents 1777-present'

You'll access the 'Congressional Documents 1777-present (U.S. Serial Set)' database. Here you'll be able to search for pre-1981 reports using the search format, h.rp 96-1196 or s.rp 96-590

Click on the report in your search results and you'll be taken to a summary of the report. In order to access the full report, you'll need to click on the link for 'Replica of Original Proceedings' to the right.

Now you'll be taken to a scanned image of the hard copy original, which is text searchable.