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A newsletter from West providing Westlaw® search tips for corporate counsel and staff
May/June, 2007
Search one room, not the whole house!
The Table of Contents service offers an easy way to search only the relevant portions of a treatise or code.
Sure, there are ways to search within a chapter of a treatise or statutory or regulatory code using various field restrictions. But there's an easier way: Use the
Table of Contents service (TOC) to run a search.
Yes, we said, "run a search."
You are probably familiar with the other way to use the TOC (i.e., browsing the headings and clicking any section name that sounds relevant). But you might not know that the TOC also provides an easy way to search within a defined section of a code or other publication.
This feature is particularly useful when searching an enormous publication, e.g., the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), for documents that you know appear only in one or more portions. For example, if you want only sections on the bad debt reserves of banking institutions, why search the sections that govern corporate liquidations?
Bonus: You may find that when your search is restricted to a specific chapter or other portion of a publication, a single term or bare-bones query will often be sufficient.
How to search using the Table of Contents service
To search specific portions of a publication using the TOC, first do either of the following:
- Access a statutory, regulatory, or treatise database. If the TOC is available for the database, a Table of Contents link will be displayed at the database Search page. Click this link.
- While viewing a document in your search result, click Table of Contents on the Links tab in the left frame. (If the TOC is available for the database containing the document, the Links tab will contain a Table of Contents link.)
Then complete the following steps:
1. While viewing the table of contents, select the check boxes next to the titles, chapters, subchapters, or other portions you want to search.
2. Click Search.
3. The Table of Contents search page is displayed; your selections are listed in the TOC selection(s) box. If you want to remove a selection from the list, click delete.
4. If desired, type a term or terms in the Add search terms and connectors text box, using connectors to specify the relationship between terms.
5. Click Search.
If you have questions about TOC searching or need search assistance, call the West Reference Attorneys at 1-800-REF-ATTY (1-800-733-2889).