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Loislaw User’s Guide
Legal Research Made Easy
The purpose of the Loislaw User’s Guide is to provide basic understanding of the simple, yet powerful search process of Loislaw and its search engine. The search engine
used by Loislaw allows word searches, phrase searches (two or more adjacent words) or
a combination of words and phrases. The search system follows a logical linear process
guiding the researcher through a simple four-step procedure.
Boolean Searching
To search through databases that contain millions of documents, in a speedy fashion, it
is imperative that Loislaw index words in the databases being searched. While Loislaw
indexes essentially every word in the document, there are some words that occur so
often that Loislaw does not index them because they are generally useless in helping us
sift out a unique document. These are called "stop" words and typically include one, two
or three character words like I, a, an, am, we, she, the, us, etc. Loislaw also does not
index the words NEAR, AND, OR, NOT, though these words must be used in a query
to connect words or phrases when constructing your search query. In this instance, the
system is not looking for these connector terms, but instead is using them to connect the
search terms, e.g., illegal search and probable cause. The and in this instance is a
Boolean Connector, insuring that both phrases are present in the document. More information on the usage of Boolean Connectors is provided on pages 6-8 of this User Guide.
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