Is the plural of the word plural really plural?
Westlaw automatically searches for the singular and plural forms of words. Simply use the singular form of a word and Westlaw will also search for the plural form. This works for both regular plurals and irregular plurals. Searching for the word motion will also search for the plural form, motions; searching for the word memorandum will also retrieve the irregular plural memoranda. The reverse is not true, however: in Terms and Connectors, searching for the plural only matches the plural form.

Using Copy with Reference
Has copying and pasting left your brief feeling a little blue? You can eliminate hyperlinks by using the "Copy with Reference" tool. Simply highlight the desired portion of text, click the "Tools" menu in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, choose the "Copy with Ref" option and click on the Go button. The selected text will appear in a pop-up box where you can use the copy button or function to paste the text where you wish. As an added bonus, the citation of the document you are copying will be included when you paste

Making the most of Citing References in KeyCite
Is it possible to be too popular? When you KeyCite a case, there can be a very large number of citing references. You can use Westlaw's "Limit KeyCite Display" function to narrow the KeyCite results. Look for the "Limit KeyCite Display" button in the bottom of the screen. You can limit the KeyCite display by document type, date, depth of treatment, or even run a terms and connectors search through the KeyCite references by using the Locate function.

Navigating Westlaw with the Site Map
Wondering where to start after logging into Westlaw? The "Site Map" link at the top of the screen lays out all of your options. Whether you need to find a database to search in, find a document by citation or party name, browse a table of contents or set your account preferences, the Site Map will get you where you need to go. Still wondering where to start? The "Site Map" also includes a link to our Customer Support Contact phone numbers - or just dial 800-WESTLAW.

More cases like this
Have you found a headnote that states the rule of law you want and you'd like to find more cases supporting that rule? Click on the "Most Cited Cases" link next to that headnote to run a search that will retrieve more cases with headnotes organized under KeyNumber. Click "KeyCite Citing References for this Headnote" to get all of the cases that cite to your decision for the point of law in that headnote.

Want one-stop shopping for legislative history?
Use Westlaw's Arnold &Porter (A&P) Legislative History databases to retrieve comprehensive legislative history on Sarbanes-Oxley, the Patriot Act or other major federal acts in one simple search. Under "U.S. Federal Materials" in the Westlaw directory, open the Arnold &Porter Collection folder for a comprehensive list of A&P databases including Arnold &Porter Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SAROX-LH). A Terms and Connecters search for CI(A&P) or just the word arnold in any A&P database will retrieve all documents available for a particular act.

Resending a document you've printed
Do you need to be able to resend a document? You can do this by accessing the print/delivery manager! Just click on the white "Site Map" link at the top of the screen, look in the right column for "Tools", then click on "Print/Delivery Manager". Simply check the boxes beside the requested documents, hit the Print or Email button and you are on your way!

Having trouble finding Securities Statutes and Regulations?
The Securities Practitioner Tab has a tool to assist you. On the left side of the Securities Practitioner tab there is a link to 'Find Securities Documents'. This convenient tool provides templates. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission has promulgated Rule 15CA2-1 in relation to the Exchange Act of 1934. On the template, simply find the box for Securities Act of 1934 -- Rules, type in the rule number, press the Go button and Westlaw automatically takes you into the relevant regulatory section.

The advantages of using the hyphen and effective acronym searches
Doing corporate work? You might need to find some good will or close a stop-gap. But is it "good will," good-will or goodwill? Get all of these at once; dashes are for more than just Morse code! Hyphenated words pick up all three versions. Thus, use of stop-gap as a term will instruct Westlaw to search for stop gap, stopgap and stop-gap. And just like dashes, dots are for more than just Morse Code. If you are using an acronym or an abbreviation in a search, always put periods between the letters -- you never know what punctuation a court or author will use. By placing periods between the letters, Westlaw will search for your term with or without periods. E.g., using the search term U.S.A. in the database SCT (U.S. Supreme Court cases) will return more results than USA.

How to trim down your result when printing statutes
Is your printer ready to break after printing 538 pages of annotations? Removing annotations from statutes is one-click away: after clicking on the Print or Email button, check off the "Statutory Text Only" option. If you want to get rid of the annotations on your screen, you can use the Tools menu in the lower right-hand portion of the screen to choose the Limit by Fields option and click the Go button. Check the box next to Substantive-Doc and press OK. The annotations will now be removed from your screen display. Printing from this display will work, too.

Effective wildcard searching on Westlaw
What do trees and words have in common? They both have roots! When searching on Westlaw, the ! symbol functions as a root expander. When you truncate a word and place the ! (root expander) at the end of your search Westlaw will return all forms with that root. For example: neglig! retrieves negligence, negligent, negligently, etc. On some other systems, you may have used the * symbol. On Westlaw, that does something different. Sometimes you have to let a letter become the star. On Westlaw, the * symbol (AKA the star or the asterisk) is the universal character. You can use the universal character anywhere in a word except at the beginning. For example, gr*w retrieves grow and grew. Try a search for ti(Swens*n) in ALLCASES to see it in action.

The SMART way to use of Find by Citation
Trying to find the right format to do a Find? The 'Find by Citation' box is a SMART box. If you type in the publication you are looking for, a template will be displayed that shows you the proper find format. Just fill in the template and just press Go. For example, type NY-ST into the 'Find by Citation' and a template will be displayed containing all of the proper find formats for the New York Statutes. If you only know the publication name, such as American Lawyer, try it anyway!

Do you want to sigh because your research is returning too many cases?
You can significantly narrow your results if you run the search in the Synopsis and Digest fields. The Synopsis and Digest fields restrict your query to the synopsis and the headnotes of the decision. The Digest field contains the West Topic and Key Numbers, their descriptions and the headnote text; the Headnote field only contains the headnote text. For example, the query sy,di(zoo /p animal) returns only about 15% of the results for the query zoo /p animal

Cover all the bases with antonyms
Antonym... it's Greek to me. The origin of the word Antonym is Greek 'anti' (opposite) plus 'onoma' (name). Antonyms increase the power of searching on Westlaw. Courts often use the antonym of a word, so a case would be missed if a search does not include both the word and its antonym. When searching for a word like 'reasonable', we suggest always using the antonym 'unreasonable'; likewise 'allow' should be paired with 'forbid!' and 'disallow!', 'admiss!' and 'inadmiss!', etc.

Ever wondered if your judge has ruled on a similar argument?
You can find decisions by a particular judge by using the judge field - JU(NAME). For example if you wanted to search for opinions from Judge Blackstone the search would be: ju(Blackstone). You can combine the judge field with your other search terms, too. The search 'ju(Blackstone) &"mens rea" ' will return all opinions by Judge Blackstone that contain the phrase mens rea.

How SMART is Westlaw?
The "Search these Databases" box is a SMART box, too. You can easily find a database by describing it in plain English -- don't abbreviate anything to give the system the most context. Westlaw will display the databases which closely match your description, including hyperlinks into your database as well as the identifier and SCOPE icon. Try typing "Wright Miller" into the "Search these Databases" box; another good example is "New York Statutes."

Is there a synonym for Thesaurus?
To make sure your search terms cover all the different ways a judge might phrase your legal issue be sure to use synonyms. Click the "Thesaurus" link to the right of the Search box and let Westlaw suggest additional search terms! Also, don't miss the "Add Related Terms," "Expand Search," and "Did You Mean" Smart Tools hiding in the Search area of your Westlaw preferences.

Do you have a one-time research assignment and need to learn more about the topic?
Westlaw has a tab that can help. You can display a topical tab for one research session without having to save the tab. To try it, click on the "Add a Tab" link on the right-hand side of your Westlaw window. Then click "Add Westlaw Tabs" on the top middle. Scroll down to the topical tabs section and you will see tabs on topics ranging from Animals to Medical Malpractice to Public Utilities. If you click the blue underlined name of the tab, it will display the tab for this research session and the tab will be removed when you log off. To keep the tab around, you can use the checkbox next to the tab's name and click "Add to my tabset."

Has the Statute of Limitations expired?
Out of Time? To quickly determine the statute of limitations on a cause of action you should search in case law! It is often much easier to find a relevant statute by searching case law. For example, try this search in NY-CS: action statute /3 limitation /s contract agreement It quickly reveals that contracts are subject to a six year statute of limitations. If, however, you attempted to find the statute itself (NY CPLR 312) using the phrase "statute of limitations," you will not find it. Why? It is because the statute describes what actions must be "commenced within six years." Because this query also takes advantage of the fact that this type of law is sometimes known as a Limitation of Action, you'll get better results. You can also try the statutes index for the particular jurisdiction. Under that you will find listed "Limitation of Action," and you can see the statutes the editors thought fit under each cause of action.

How popular can a name be if no one knows where to find it?
Congress assigns many pieces of legislation a 'popular name'; these may be as well known as the USA Patriot Act, or as obscure as the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Restoration Act of 2000. Westlaw has useful tools to help you find where these acts have been codified. Go to the USCA database search screen and choose the "Pop. Name Table" link in the upper right-hand corner. Then select the letter your act starts with and scroll down, clicking to the next part if necessary. When you click the name of the act, a table will display showing where the sections of the act were codified. It also shows the Public Law number, which you can use to do a Find to the entire act.

Uniform codes aren't always coded uniformly
Uniformity is boring! Many states have enacted uniform laws, but have used a unique codification numbering system. Therefore the Uniform Commercial Code's statute of frauds section may be listed as 2-201 in the uniform version, but it is 402.201 in Wisconsin, 2-201 in New York, 2201 in Pennsylvania and 490:2-201 in Hawaii. Rather than only using the code section as a search term, include language from the statute. The next time you are looking for 2-201, try this search: U.C.C. "uniform commercial code" "commercial code" /p 2-201 ("between merchant" /s time /s writing) ("statute of fraud")

Scanning your results in context
Want to save some time? You can. Make your search results easier to skim by showing more search terms and more context around each term. To do this, click the Preferences link in the upper-right corner of the screen, then 'Result List Display' on the left. In the middle of the screen, you will now see the options to show more or less text. The result list can display as many as 30 words before and after each of the first 20 instances of a terms and connecters search. You can also display up to 50 citations at a time, so you don't have to wait for new pages to load.

Incorporating a court rule in your search
To account for the many ways a court might cite to the rules, try using the following search strategy. To look for cases involving Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), try this: rule f.r.c.p. "federal rule of civil procedure" fed.-r.-civ.-pro. fed.-r.-civ.-proc. +5 12(b)(6)

Know everything about a case but its citation?
Click on the "Find &Print" link at the top of your screen and then the "Find a Case by Party Name" link on the left. Enter the information that you have and a list of matching cases will be displayed. You can just scroll down the list to find the appropriate case.

Sometimes order is necessary!
Did you know that you can require your terms to appear in a certain order within your search? Searching for cat +2 dog ensures that the word cat will appear at most two words before the word dog in your results. Compare this to the results from cat /2 dog, which will retrieve documents with the word cat either two words before or after the word dog.

The key to effective Federal Register searches.
Do you feel like red tape gets in the way of your search for Federal Register (FR) documents that relate to a particular regulation? Solution: Run a search in the FR database for the Regulation Identification Number (RIN) that is assigned to each regulatory proposal at the time it first appears in the Federal Register. The RIN is included in every subsequent Federal Register document regarding the regulation, making it your only necessary search term. The RIN for a regulation will typically appear in the heading of each document relating to that regulation.

Does it feel like your client is regulated by every government agency in the nation?
Avoid multiple searches for employment, insurance and securities regulatory issues! Access all regulations, adjudications, forms, agency publications and West editorial content for all state and federal jurisdictions that affect your client in one single place, Regulations Suite. You can find the Regulations Suite Tab by using Add/Remove Tabs link at the top of every Westlaw screen.

What's in a name?
Did you know you can search for cases involving a particular party by using the Title field in a case database? For example, if you wanted a case where the United States is a party, add ti("United States" U.S.) to your terms and connecters search. This will look for either the phrase United States or the term U.S. in the caption of a case.

Order can be productive.
If you get a large number of results back, you can increase the quality of the results by requiring certain terms to repeat. If you search for apple /p apple then the word will match itself. But, because of the left to right order required by the +p connector, searching for apple +p apple will ensure that the word apple appears at least twice in the same paragraph. Orange +255 orange works, too.

Is all news good news?
Did you know that in the databases ALLNEWS and ALLNEWSPLUS there is function that will allow you to limit your searches to publications from certain geographic regions? Simply click on the "Limit ALLNEWS" or "Limit ALLNEWSPLUS" link to the right of the search box, just under the Search Westlaw button. From this screen you can select United States or International publications. You can also use the "Limit Your Search using SmartTerms" boxes below to be very specific about your news sources.

Too much news to read?
You can use the "Limit Your Search using SmartTerms" in many news databases to limit your results by checking boxes for Industry, Company, Subject or Location. You can even use combinations of these criteria by clicking on the arrows in the middle to add terms to the area on the right.

Government agency searches
Who is the C.I.R.? The C.I.R. or the Commissioner of Internal Revenue is the individual who heads the IRS. Remember that cases involving a governmental agency may list either the title of the agency or the head of that agency. So, for tax cases, look for the C.I.R. or the individual's name - even better, use the FTX-CS database. When searching for case law regarding agency opinions, your search should include these honorary titles and individuals names, as well as the proper name of the agency.