How To Search Westlaw Cheaply and Without Incurring Large Costs
I have been working for about a year and a half now, which means I have about four and a half years of legal research under my belt (including law school, of course). While I was in law school, I noticed that the Lexis/Westlaw representatives never really spoke about how much Lexis/Westlaw actually costs and how to control those costs. Yeah, they had that half-hour class you could take on controlling costs, but I never got those concepts under my belt until I was actually working and had to be cognizant of costs every day. And believe me, those costs are big. I’m a Westlaw guy, so I am going to focus on that below, but these concepts equally apply to Lexis. Here are my thoughts on actually saving money while using these research tools:
Transactional versus Hourly
The very first choice you have to made when you sign into Lexis/Westlaw is which path you want to take. Transactional charges per search, hourly charges per time. People will discuss this until they are blue in the face…my advice is simple: transactional all the time. It’s crazy to think that you are going to get anything positive from these tools while you’re under the gun of the time clock ticking away. Your search results taking a long time to display in your browser — dollars ticking away. With transactional, you craft a smart search and then you own the results. Take all the time you want and really delve in. I used hourly a bit and find that nothing positive comes from being afraid of forgetting to log out.
Search versus Limit
If you’re using transactional searching, then the Limit tool is your best friend. Once you pay that whopper costs for your initial search then you own the search results. Search results will only return the first 10,000 results and if you do your search correctly, you will have 9,999 results to work with. Limit let’s you narrow those results down by running another search, but only on the search results. It takes your initial set of results and applies a Limit search only on those 9,999 cases/articles/etc. The best part about Limit searches: they’re totally free. Run one limit search. Don’t like the results? Run another one! I will do the broadest search I can and then run a whole bunch of limits until I find what I’m looking for.
Research Trail
If you look in the upper-right hand corner of a Westlaw window, just under Sign Off, is a link called “Research Trail” and that link is your best friend. Your Research Trail shows you every search, limit, and case you ever searched for or viewed. Every time you sign on Westlaw creates a new Research Trail for you. You can view up to 30 days worth of research trails. Need to find that case you viewed on Monday that, at the time, you didn’t think was perfect, but now you do? Check your research trail. Now, here’s the zinger. Any case/article/etc. that is in your research trail from that day is free to view when you use the link from the research trail to view the document. If you did a Find to pull up an opinion this morning, then just open up your research trail, scroll down to this morning’s searches, find the opinion, and click the link. Even opening searches again is free. The concept is that you have 24-hours to access all of that day’s work. You aren’t charged for re-accessing that information. There is a caveat on this: if you re-run the search, that is you open up a database and re-type in your search and hit the search button: charged. If you click the link for your search in the Research Trail: free. Use it, love it.
- Add Notes to specific trails
Going along with my fondness of the Research Trail is the usability of it. All of your Research Trails are stored from the past month so that you can go 20 days back and see what you did. Do you need to find that research on free speech you did last week? If you’re in transactional searches then you might want to put some notes on your Research Trails so that you know what each Trail focused on — you can do that in the “View All Research Trails” area, just click the link in the upper-right hand corner of the Research Trail page, then hit the “Add Notes” link. This will keep your Trails organized and easy to access.
- Email your Research Trail
Often times people come to me with billing questions, such as how many searches did you run on January 15? Or, did you ever consider this case during your searches? Sometimes it’s after that 30-day window that Westlaw gives you. If that’s the case, then having your Research Trail emailed to you is a lifesaver. In your preferences you can have Westlaw email you your Research Trail after you sign out. I have a rule in Outlook setup to just archive those into a folder and mark the emails as read so I never even see them in my inbox. It’s an insurance policy and it’s paid off more than once.
SUBSCRIBER Database
Sometimes I want to see how much it will cost to run a transactional search on a particular database. Since I’m in Transactional searches, it cost money to run every search. If a database search fee is too expensive, I might narrow my field if the search isn’t mission critical. The SUBSCRIBER database let’s me view the cost and scope of any database on Westlaw. Instead of searching ALLFEDS or CTA, I search SUBSCRIBER with the database name and I can get all of the information I need.
Find and Print
Some people just want a case to read and they want it fast. No research, no find this case from 1997…get me this citation ASAP. Westlaw offers a feature called “Find and Print” that lets you enter a citation and have the case downloaded, emailed, or printed automatically. No sign-in, no database choosing, no Fast Print versus regular print, just enter the cite, choose your download option, enter your login ID and go. Quick and easy. It’s also cheaper: printing a case on Westlaw can cost $12, Find and Print: $4.
Limit Citing References
Let’s say you have the perfect case, you’ve found it — congrats. Now, you want to find other cases exactly like it: just see what cites to that document. That’s easy, just head over to Citing References and see what cites to that opinion. But, Citing References will give you everything and the kitchen sink. Let’s say you’re only looking for cases that cite to one small section of a huge Supreme Court opinion. When you view the Citing References there is a Limit on those references. Check the bottom-left hand corner of your Citing References window and click Limit. There you can limit by type of document, headnote, jurisdiction, time, and even run basic searches on the Citing References. If you need 2nd Circuit cases that cite to headnotes 10 and 11 of the opinion you are reading and that mention “negligence,” you can do that.
Call Westlaw
If you’re just stuck and don’t know where to start OR if you are in a super-expensive database and don’t want to fudge the first search: call Westlaw. Westlaw post-law school doesn’t offer online support, but you can call them whenever you want. The best part: totally free. Call them, explain your problem, and they will help you figure it out. Need a narrow search to keep you within (and on the border of) the 10,000 search results limit, they can do it. Have you been digging around all day and you’re coming up with zero on-point results: let them help. They won’t do research for you, but they will point you in the right direction and even walk you down the path a bit.
BNA
Find out if BNA searches are available whereever you go to school or work. If you really want to save on costs, some firms offer BNA searching for free. In other words, the client is never charged for your time on BNA. BNA is extremely useful for doing some “let me just understand this area before I start doing searches where I know what I’m talking about” searches. At the very least, it will get you the F.3d/F.Supp. citations for free when someone asks you “I’m looking for this case from 1997 called Hemlock in the Southern District of New York.”
