Key word searching
Using the power of full text searching on Lexis or Westlaw, you can search for cases that contain specific words or phrases relevant to your research. Full text searching is most efficient when you are looking for a needle in a haystack: when you have an unusual factual situation; when your search terms are unique, unambiguous, or terms of art; when the legal issues are narrow and well-defined.
If your Westlaw search has retrieved too many documents, it is possible to limit the search by searching only within the synopsis or digest fields or a combination of the two. To perform the equivalent of a synopsis/digest search in Lexis, use the following: ln-summary(term) or ln-headnotes(term). Most key terms describing the case would appear in these fields. It is important to remember that the synopsis and the digest are not part of the case, but editorial enhancements that the publisher has prepared for use by the researcher. If the court itself provides a synopsis, you will see two synopses in the document.
If you have been asked to find all decisions a particular judge has written, or appellate cases in which a particular attorney was counsel, you can require their names to appear in the appropriate part of the case, using segment searching on Lexis or field searching on Westlaw.