This section explains three additional tools that help you retrieve relevant documents with increased precision: advanced operators, wild cards, and shortcut searching. As you incorporate these tools, you will want to understand the processing rules and the ramifications of nesting that are associated with these techniques.

deficit w/5 spending

This search would retrieve only documents in which spending follows deficit by one to five words.

Adjacency Operator
The adjacency operator is the default operator on TheLaw.net If no operator is specified, the adjacency word relationship will be assumed. ADJ is equivalent to a proximity operator with a defined range of one word (i.e., w/1). It is also equivalent to using a single quotation to find a phrase. This operator is unidirectional, from left to right. It will retrieve only those documents where the second word immediately follows the first word. It is helpful to use this connector when you want to search for numerical information: dates, statute sections, social security numbers because you can substitute the punctuation mark with the adjacency operator. If you were looking for documents about "deficit spending," if you use the adjacency connector your search may look like this:

deficit adj spending

This search would retrieve only documents in which spending follows deficit by one word.

hearsay near/5 objection

hearsay near objection

Wild Cards

Wild Cards can be very useful if you are unsure of the spelling of a word or if the word is commonly misspelled. The single character wild card operator, a question mark (?), substitutes for a single character, while the character string wild card operator, an asterisk (*), represents a string of unknown characters. The Stemming Wild Card operator ( + ) retrieves documents where the search term is used as a stem of another word. You can position wild card operators at the beginning, middle or end of a query word, and you can combine them within a word.

Here are examples of Wild Cards, how to use them and what they retrieve:

Search Word with Wild Card                      Retrieves

medic*                                                   medics, medical, medicine, medicate, medically, medication

 

*ane                                                       bane, lane, crane, plane, profane, insane

m?n                                                       man, men

m???                                                     mean, moon

m*n                                                       man, men, mean, maroon, Manhattan

run+                                                       run, runs, running, rerun

judg?ment                                           judgement, judgment

Note: You cannot use wild card operators to represent numeric characters (e.g., 19??).

Note: You can combine both wild card operators within a single query word, e.g., ?ffect*, for results such as, effecting, effective, affects, etc. 

Shortcut Searching

If you already have a defining piece of information about the case you are looking for, you may be able to use a Shortcut search to expedite the search process. These examples illustrate the uses of each Shortcut.

If you are looking for case(s) . . .                                                       Use this Shortcut

only from the Court of Appeals                                                 appeals:court

where one party is Patricia                                                      patricia:parties

where Penna is attorney of record                                            penna:counsel

with the docket number A79727                                               a79727:docket

with parallel cite of 868 P.2d 772                                              868 p.2d 772:cite

issued on June 3, 1998                                                           June 3, 1998:dated

where Judge Wollheim was on the panel                                  wollheim:panel

where Judge Wollheim authored the decision                           wollheim:author

The trickiest part of formatting Shortcut searches is knowing the spacing, spelling and punctuation that the court uses. When in doubt, you can use two Shortcuts in the same query as alternatives. If you are looking for cases issued on either June 2, 1998 or June 3, 1998, you would use the Dated Shortcut. The search may look like this:

june 2, 1998:dated or june 3, 1998:dated

Processing Rules

Proximity, Adjacent, Near (processed in order from left to right)
NOT
AND
OR

If you want to override the processing rules, you can use parentheses as scope of operation delimiters to change the order in which operators are processed, just as you did in an 8^th grade algebraic expression.

Nesting

If you use one set of parentheses inside another to reorder the processing, you have done what is called nesting, wherein one operation becomes a subset of another. The nested (internal) operation is evaluated before the one that contains it. If you want to retrieve documents discussing negligence or assumption of the risk related to jaywalking, your search may look like this: