WestlawNext is a tremendously powerful research product, with an attractive, up-to-date interface that law students love. Like all research tools, though, WestlawNext has some peculiarities that can trip you up in certain situations. In working with students and other researchers, the librarians at UCI Law have found two small things about searching cases–specifically, the Document Preview in case search results–that you might want to be aware of:
- When you see a word highlighted in your search results, it does not necessarily mean that word was used in the search.
- When you see a phrase that looks very much like a West “Topic” in your search results, it’s not necessarily from West’s Key Number System.
Highlighted terms are not necessarily the ones that matched.
At this time, search results for cases in WestlawNext don’t precisely display what went on behind the scenes with search terms. This is because the highlighted terms are really just the browser display’s best guess at what the background search was doing. Think of it as a two-step process: first a search is run using your search terms, then the search results get displayed, with highlighted search terms. Usually, the search process and the display process match up nicely. But (at least for cases) sometimes that’s not true. Here’s an example:
Search 1: federal cases from February 11, 2011 using [(“criminal law” or “criminal justice”) and sentencing] gets more than 10 results, including United States v. Weathers. The “Document Preview” of Weathers starts with: “CRIMINAL JUSTICE – Sentencing.” “CRIMINAL JUSTICE” is highlighted, as well as a few terms in the Document Preview, and also in the result details. This would lead me to believe that my search returned Weathers because it has the phrase “CRIMINAL JUSTICE” in the Document Preview, and that my search looked at the Document Preview and found a match there.
Search 2: federal cases from February 11, 2011 using [“criminal justice” and sentencing]. Weathers isn’t there! This is because Weathers only has the phrase “CRIMINAL JUSTICE” in the Document Preview–not in any other part of the opinion.
So in spite of what the highlighting from the first search might lead you to believe, the Document Preview isn’t necessarily included in searches at all.
Many times, the Document Preview for a case comes from In This Issue case summaries from West’s print advance sheets. The summaries are written by West editors at the same time they add other editorial content. But when WestlawNext does a search, it doesn’t look at those summaries at all (even though it does display them in search results.) According to West, the “Document Preview” might be a searchable field in the future.
“Topics” are not necessarily Key Number Topics.
This is due, in part, to the fact that online systems are still working with systems designed for print. Print advance sheets are opinions published in soft cover before the bound volumes come out. West’s advance sheets have a sort of topical table-of-contents at the beginning called “In This Issue.” In This Issue is just a few easily-scannable pages of extra-brief case summaries, grouped by subject. It’s very friendly for browsing:
However, subjects for In This Issue are much less granular than West Key Number topics. In fact, they’re entirely different systems. The In This Issue subjects are designed for browsing across few printed pages; they’re more general, and more up-to-date. (There is, for example, an In This Issue subject for “E-COMMERCE,” but nothing equivalent in the Key Number system.)