Formulating a Cost-Effective Search

1. Formulating a Cost-Effective Search

2. Search Preparation Fully plan your search on paper before signing on to Westlaw. • Articulate your issue, using concise legal terminology. • Choose key terms. • Add reasonable alternative terms for your key terms. • If you are using the Terms and Connectors search method, select appropriate connectors. liability of car manufacturer for defective tires liability car defective tire vehicle dangerous automobile liab! /p car automobile vehicle /p danger! defect! /s tire

3. Choosing the Search Method • Decide whether Terms and Connectors or Natural Language searching will be more effective. • Use Natural Language when • you are searching for broad concepts • you are a new or infrequent user of Westlaw • your Terms and Connectors search is not retrieving the information you need

4. Choosing the Query Method • Use Terms and Connectors when • you are searching for particular terms • you need to find all documents containing very specific information, such as all cases with a particular topic and key number or all articles that mention a specific company name • you need to search a database for which Natural Language searching is not available