May/June 2009
FormFinder and FORMS-ALL: The Best of Both Worlds
By Jay Shuck, West Customer and Product Documentation
If your organization does litigation or transactional work, you already know the time-saving benefits of a legal form. But what good is it to save time with a form if you waste lots of time looking for it?
That's the thinking behind
FormFinder on Westlaw. With FormFinder, you can quickly find the form you need from the 600,000+ forms on Westlaw without choosing databases, narrowing your search, or sifting through hundreds of irrelevant documents.
"We needed to make it easier for people to find the forms that we have on Westlaw," says John Gisselquist of West Product Development. "The way we tagged forms with topics and subtopics worked well for the FormFinder tools in the practice area–specific Westlaw Practitioner products. So we went in and identified all the forms on Westlaw that we can tag that way."
You don't even have to look for FormFinder–the link is right there at the top of every Westlaw page.
What is FormFinder?
FormFinder is more than a search engine for forms: It's an intuitive, user-friendly search template that serves as the single access point to more than 600,000 forms on Westlaw. The template allows you select from 45 distinct topics (many with several subtopics) and restrict your result to general, national, or state-specific forms–even without typing search terms.
FormFinder retrieves forms from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, such as the following:
- national and state-specific forms collections
- national and state-specific treatises and practice guides (more than 1,200 analytical publications are available)
- Westlaw eForms from federal and state courts and agencies
- official forms from state statutes and administrative codes
- ENFLEX® environmental, health, and safety forms
- legal encyclopedias
- United States Code Annotated®
- Code of Federal Regulations
- official forms from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other federal agencies
"With a few exceptions, any form on Westlaw should feed into FormFinder," says Lisa Mulrooney, Litigation product developer at West.
For more information about the general, federal, and state sources that are searched by FormFinder, go to
west.thomson.com/formfinder.
How does FormFinder work?
Click FormFinder at the top of a Westlaw page to display the FormFinder search template. Use the drop-down lists and check boxes to choose a topic, subtopic, one or more document types (text forms, fillable PDF forms, checklist, or clauses), and one or more jurisdictions. (You can narrow your search, if desired, by typing a Terms and Connectors query in the Enter Search Terms text box.) Then click Search Westlaw.
How is FormFinder different from FORMS-ALL?
In 2000, the Forms-All database (FORMS-ALL) was released-a combination database of national and state-specific practice databases, which contain more than 400,000 analytical documents related to forms.
Unlike FormFinder, FORMS-ALL contains a wealth of analytical material (including practice guides, treatises, and commentary in published forms collections) in addition to forms. Unlike FormFinder, FORMS-ALL does not include West eForms, Business Transactions Solution forms, and selected other collections, nor does it offer a way to narrow your search by jurisdiction.
When should I use FormFinder? When should I use FORMS-ALL?
Here's a suggested game plan:
Research phase: FORMS-ALL Analytical documents make FORMS-ALL an ideal starting point as you gather the primary authorities, determine the need for one or more forms, review drafting checklists, identify the necessary forms and filing details, and evaluate practice tips.
Drafting phase: FormFinder Once you know the forms you need, FormFinder brings them to you fast. The user-friendly search template makes it easy to specify a topic, subtopic (if available), and jurisdiction. In addition, with FormFinder, you don't have to sift through analytical materials to find the form you need.
Don't forget the model documents! For more guidance on form drafting, you can use Westlaw to retrieve thousands of corporate filings, pleadings, motions, and other documents already on file in courts and agencies. You can retrieve such filings in databases like the following:
- Model Documents Combined (MODELDOC-ALL) (or other practice-area-specific Model Documents database)
- EDGAR-SEC Filings (EDGAR)
- Trial Motions (MOTIONS)
- Trial Pleadings (PLEADINGS)
- Briefs Multibase (BRIEF-ALL)
- State and Federal Civil Trial Court Filings (FILING-ALL) (or other court filings databases specific to a practice area or jurisdiction)
For more information, contact your librarian relations manager.