Case Law Research

Keyword Searching

Keyword search is another way to locate cases. Electronic legal research databases such as Westlaw, Lexis Advance, and Bloomberg Law allow users to use both natural language search (Google-like search; e.g. "What are the elements of battery?") and Boolean terms and connectors search (e.g. Football /p Baseball searches for documents in which "Football" and "Baseball" appear in the same paragraph).

Use the search box to enter your keywords.

At this point of your legal career, do not begin legal research with keyword search. Instead, start your research with secondary sources and annotated statutes (if there is a statute on point). If you can't find anything after using these two methods, then use keyword search.

1. Natural Language Search

Let's say you go to Google and type "When does daylight savings end?"
You type keywords in the search box and the search engine uses its algorithms to retrieve results. Google will give you information regarding daylight savings
Natural language search can be a good place to begin your keyword search. However, it is not always the most effective/efficient method as it will retrieve too many. Use filters (e.g. limit your results to 7th Circuit cases) and/or the "Search Within Results" box to filter your search results.

2. Boolean Terms and Connector

As an undergraduate student, you wrote research papers. Additionally, you probably used databases such as JSTOR or EBSCO Acadmic Search Premier to find the articles that you eventually cited in your research paper. To find the articles, you ran search terms such as (Cat AND Dog) NOT Tiger in order to find articles that contain the words cat and dog but not the word tiger.
The terms such as AND, OR, NOT are examples of Boolean terms and connectors. Westlaw, Lexis Advance, and Bloomberg Law also allow users to use Boolean terms and connectors.
- Example: You want to find cases in which negligence and "hot coffee" both appear in the same sentence. You use the proximity connector /s to tell the system that you only want the cases that have the two terms appearing in the same sentence
  - So you type negligence /s "hot coffee" in the search box
Using Boolean Terms and Connectors is a two-step process:
- Choose your terms (keywords)
- Determine the relationship between your terms to decide the appropriate connectors (e.g. AND, OR, NOT, /p, /s, etc.)
  - Do you want all of your terms to appear?
  - Do you want your terms to appear in the same sentence/paragraph?
  - Do you want your terms to appear within 5 words of each other?
Here are some commonly used Boolean connectors for Westlaw/Lexis Advance/Bloomberg Law
- AND
  - Cat AND Dog (documents that have both Cat and Dog)
- OR
  - Cat OR Dog (documents that have either Cat or Dog. This also retrieves documents that have both Cat and Dog)
- "" (quotation mark)
  - Always use quotation marks for a phrase!!!!!!!. If you don't use quotation marks, the system will treat your phrase as two (or more) distinct words
    - For example, use "hot coffee" to mean coffee that is hot
      - What happens if you type hot coffee without quotation marks?
        
        Westlaw treats a space between words as OR. It will look for documents that contain either hot or coffee
        
        Bloomberg Law treats a space between words as AND. It will look for documents that contain both words. It does not care whether the words appear next to each other. So you may get a document in which hot appears in the first paragraph, and coffee in the final paragraph.
- /p (same paragraph); /s (same sentence)
  - Cat /p Dog (documents in which Cat and Dog appear in the same paragraph)
  - Cat /s Dog (documents in which Cat and Dog appear in the same sentence)
- /# (where # is a number)
  - Cat /10 Dog (documents in which Cat and Dog appear within 10 words of each other)
    - Will retrieve a document that contains a sentence such as
      - "I have a cat, and she has a dog" (here Cat and Dog appear within 4 words of each other)
- !
  - This is known as a root expander. Use this to retrieve words with variant endings. For example, Obey! retrieves Obey, Obeys, Obeyed, Obeying
    - Negligen! /s "hot coffee" retrieves documents in which "hot coffee" appear in the same sentence with
      - Negligence OR
      - Negligent
- ( )
  - Use Parenthesis to group your terms. Westlaw/Lexis Advance/Bloomberg use order of operations to process connectors if your search term contains multiple connectors. Here is the order of operation:
    - " "
    - OR
    - Proximity connector (/s, /p, /#)
    - AND
    - NOT
  - Let' say your search term is Nevada /s cat OR dog /p Arizona
    - The system processes cat OR dog first. It then processes /s and /p.
      - Your search term is essentially Nevada /s (cat OR dog) /p Arizona
        
        It retrieves documents in which
        
        either cat or dog appear in the
        
        same sentence with Nevada
        
        and same paragraph with Arizona
        
        So you will get a document that says "My dog was born in Nevada. Then we moved to Arizona"
    - However, if you want documents that contain either
      - Nevada /s Cat
        
        OR
      - Dog /p Arizona
    - Then you would need to put parenthesis to change the order of operations
      - (Nevada /s cat) OR (dog /p Arizona)

3. This looks complicated. Do I really need to memorize all of this?

You do not need to memorize the order of operations and all of the Boolean connectors. Follow these tips to avoid confusion
- Always use quotation marks for a phrase ("hot coffee")
- Use parenthesis if you want to group your terms
- Click on "Advanced Search" and you will find the list of Boolean connectors for your research platform
  - "Advanced Search" appears next to the search box
- Use singular forms (cat, dog) instead of plural forms (cats, dogs)
  - if you type cat, the system retrieves both cat and cats
  - but if you type cats, the system only retrieves cats