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There are a few different ways that you can use Fastcase's search engine to find the information you need. This page will show you how to use both natural language searches and advanced search strings to find cases and statutes. For more information on case law research, please see our Case Law Research guide.
If you don't know where the statute on the topic you're interested in is located, Fastcase allows you to use keyword searches to find statutes on a particular topic. You can use natural language keywords, which are searches using phrases similar to how we speak in everyday life, rather than search terms specifically built for a computer. Fastcase also gives you the ability to create powerful and dynamic searches using their advanced search option.
If you don't have the citation of a specific case, Fastcase allows you to use keyword searches to find cases on a particular topic. You can use natural language keywords, which are searches using phrases similar to how we speak in everyday life, rather than search terms specifically built for a computer. Fastcase also gives you the ability to create powerful and dynamic searches using their advanced search option. These short videos will walk you through both ways of searching.
If you're new to legal research, you may want to start with natural language searches. The video below will show you how to search for Texas cases using a natural language phrase:
Users who are more familiar with legal databases or who have gotten the hang of natural language searches can use Boolean operators to make their search more precise. Learn how by watching this video:
Both of the research methods discussed on the previous page regarding Case Law Research in Print (using the key number system and using annotations and footnotes) will work in legal databases, but databases like Westlaw Next, Lexis Advance, and Fastcase also offer the ability to search using keywords and phrases.
You can search using natural language phrases such as "violations of Fourth Amendment rights," but you'll most likely find that you get more relevant results if you use a legal database's special search terms and filters. Most databases allow Boolean searching and also allow the use of additional terms and connectors to help you get more precise results. Creating a custom search string is a great way to conduct efficient case law resarch.
| Operator | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|
| AND | Indicates that you want only search results that contain both of the specified terms. |
A search for employment AND discrimination will only return search results that contain both the word employment and the word discrimination. In this case, the reason for using the AND operator is if you're only researching cases involving employment discrimination and aren't concerned with cases that discuss other aspects of employment law or cases where discrimination was not involving employment. |
| OR | Indicates that you want search terms that contain either one of the search terms on either side - and it doesn't matter which one. |
A search for landlord OR lessor returns search results that contain either one of those terms. In this case, you may want to use the OR operator because landlord and lessor mean roughly the same thing and you're not sure which term a case might use. Using OR means that you will get both sets of results. |
| NOT | Indicates that you want results with the first term but do not want results that contain the second. |
A search for lease NOT residential will return results that contain the term lease but exclude everything that also includes the term residential. A good use for the NOT operator is if you keep getting irrelevant search results that you'd like to weed out. In the example above, you may be looking for cases about commercial leases and want to exclude everything about residential leases. |
| " " | Indicates that you want what's inside the quotation marks to be treated as an exact phrase. |
A search for "cease and desist" will return very different results from searching cease AND desist. The first one will return results that use the exact phrase cease and desist. The second one will only return results that have both words somewhere in the text - but there's no guarantee that they will be found together as in the phrase cease and desist. |
| ( ) | Indicates that you want the search string inside the parentheses to be processed first and then those search results to be plugged in the remainder of the search. | A good example for this is searching registration AND (vehicle OR automobile) if you didn't know whether a case would talk about car registrations using the term vehicle or automobile. The database will first run a search to find cases that use either the word vehicle or the word automobile. Using those search results, it will then process the rest of the search and return only the items that also contain the word registration. |
Many legal databases allow the use of connectors outside of the basic Boolean set to allow users to make searches more precise. These include wildcard characters and proximity connectors.
| Connector | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ! | Indicates that you want results that contain all variations of the base word you've given. | Searching for prosecut! will return search results that contain these words that are an expansion of the base "prosecut-" that was provided: prosecution, prosecutor, prosecuting, prosecute. |
| /s, /p | Indicates that you want the search terms to appear in the same sentence or same paragraph. |
A search of arrest /s warrant will return only results where arrest and warrant appear in the same sentence. You may use this search if you want to find cases where you're interested in how an arrest and a warrant relate to each other. This operator uses the concept that the more closely two words appear with relation to each other, the more closely they may be related. |
| /n | Replacing the letter n with a number, indicates that you only want results where your terms appear within that number of words of each other. | A search of burglary /3 vehicle will help you find cases where the words burglary and vehicle appear within 3 words of each other. This can be helpful if you would like search results specifically about the burglary of a vehicle, but are not sure how that may be phrased. |