Search Tips

  • To search for a case: Use quotes to make your results more precise. Example: "NRDC v. Costle"
  • To search within one or more subjects, enter a search term and then filter the results by subject.
Your searches can use the following operators.
AND

Find books that contain multiple words you specify.

Example: criminal AND intent AND negligence finds all books that contain those three terms.

OR

Find books that contain any of several words.

Example: alimony OR maintenance

Example: (dog OR cat) AND bite

Example: "hydraulic frac*" OR fracking OR hydrofracking

"

When you put a word or phrase in quotes, the results include only books with the same words in the same order as the ones inside the quotes.

  • You can use quotes to get more precise results when you search for cases.
  • In general, use quotes only if you’re looking for an exact case or word or phrase; otherwise you may inadvertently exclude helpful results.

Example: "NRDC v. Costle"

Example: "rule against perpetuities"

-

When you use a dash before a word, the search engine excludes books that contain that word from your results.

Example: tort -intentional

?

The question mark is a wildcard that matches exactly one letter.

Example: he? matches three-letter words starting with he, such as hem, hen, and so on.

*

The asterisk is a wildcard character that matches zero or more letters.

Example: he* matches any word starting with he, such as he, her, hello, helicopter, and so on.

Wildcard matching works only within a single word. For example, m*th* matches method but not meet there.

NEAR/n

Find a term within n words of another term.

Examples:

Searching on dog NEAR/4 bite returns results where dog is within 4 words of bite.

Searching on covenant NEAR/3 comp* returns results where covenant is within 3 words of words beginning with comp.

Searching on (dog OR cat) NEAR/3 bite returns results where dog or cat is within 3 words of bite.

Searching on dog NEAR bite returns results where dog is within 10 words of bite. (If you don't specify a number, the default of 10 is used.)

Note: Each word in your NEAR search is highlighted in your search results. For example, if you search on dog NEAR/4 bite, the system correctly finds only chapters where dog is within 4 words of bite. Additionally, the words dog and bite are highlighted throughout the search result chapters, even when dog is not within 4 words of bite.
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