Date: 27 August 2005

Search Help

Our search has two versions, a subscriber search and a public limited version.

Searching has to be learned. The best way to learn is to play about with the page, trying different combinations.

Please, and above all, do not get stuck. Ask!. Questions about how to use the site are the best way we have of improving it. There will be times when we do not have the case you want, but we do find the case sought in most instances, and the fact that you are looking for a case is sufficient justification for us to make sure it is here the next time for someone else. If you say what you are looking for we can either help you find it, or try to make sure it is added for next time.

General bits to understand

Our system shows the search at the top of each results page and allows you to refine the search to reduce or expand the results. At first, you should just play around with the search, and learn to see how it works. Nothing will break.
In general, you increase the number of cases found by reducing the search parameters, and reduce the number by adding detail (and risking error). The most common mistake is to include as much as you know about a case - too much.
Strangely, if you put more information into the form, you reduce the chances of finding what you want. It is better to include only those elements you are quite sure of. It is very easy for the human mind to pick the requred case from a list of six answers.
The results are presented below the query boxes. The page reappears with the answers at the bottom. Your search terms are preserved at the top of the page so that you can refine them as necessary.
Any combination of the search boxes can be used.
The search is _not_ intelligent. It does just what you ask it to do.
Punctuation will be discarded.
The search is case insensitive. Everything is translated first to lower case.
The search takes no notice of the order of words. 'Regina v Smith' is the same as 'v Smith Regina'.
The search is an 'All words' search. The case is returned only if _all_ the search terms are found in an entry.
The search looks for a sequence of characters - not for entire words. It takes your input, and splits it up by the spaces you use. A word is merely a series of letters between spaces. That sequence is then sought from the relevant section of the database. This helps if a name is long, for example, and you are confident of the spelling of only a part.
Records are very often incorrect. This will include ours (occasionally), but it is clear that judges will often get case references wrong in their judgments.
The search is just a way of providing a starting point for your research. As soon as you find a case on the topic of interest, it can be better to begin to use the casemaps and cited-by and cases-citing pages to explore the history and development of an issue.

The cases and searches shown below are from actual searches. They explain what was wrong with what was typed and why, and what would have worked.

Search Box
Case Name	Do not try to use the full name. Case names vary greatly. Use the most unusual surnames. We will usually not have the first names of parties.
	We try to be consistent in our naming. We generally avoid shortening of names. 'A-G' will appear as 'Attorney-General', 'DPP' as Director of Public Prosections', 'CC' as 'County Council and so forth. If we know the initials or first names of a party, we will use them. We do not usually include simple titles such as 'Mr' 'Ms' etc. If you have a case name, it will often be best _not_ to add any other search term. This is particularly so where the name is an unusual one.
	Case sought	Good Search	Why	Bad Search	Why
	X (Minors) -v- Bedfordshire County Council; M (A Minor) and Another -v- Newham London Borough Council; Etc	X Minors Bedfordshire	Proper spacing. Enough to find it without too much 'noise'	X(Minors)	Ends up looking for XMinors. It needs the space, and doesn't like the brackets.
	Mettoy Pension Trustees -v- Evans	pension evans	Enough detail given to locate the case.	Meltoy Pension Trustee Ltd vs Evans	'vs' will never be found - we use '-v-'. 'Meltoy should be 'Mettoy'. With unusual words and names try to be very accurate, and use only names you are sure of.
	Regina -v- Smith and Jones	Smith Regina Jones	Both words will help restrict the search, but a long list will still be produced.	R v Jones	'R' matches against every word in which that letter appears. 'Jones' is bad as a 'second surname'. Cases will often be listed as 'Regina -v- Smith and Another', so 'Jones' will not help.
	North Glamorgan NHS Trust -v- Ceri Ann Walters	Walters Glamorgan	Enough detail given to locate the case.	Ceri	In fact we do have the first name, but we might not have, and there is a real risk of misspelling 'Ceri'. With unusual words and names if you are not sure, try to pick something else
Court	This works from a pull down box. To clear the entry, use the clear line (always the second line in the box). See the list of court codes if you need explanation of the courts involved.
Judgment Year	Years are inclusive. Clear both years to exclude the date from the criteria after they have been once used. This refers to the year in which, so far as we know, the judgment was handed down. Often a case will not appear in a law report until the following year, and occasionally not for several years. If you put a year in the 'From' box but leave the 'To' box entry clear, the program inserts the same year in the 'To' box. If you enter a year in the 'To' box, but nothing in the 'From' box, the search assumes you are searching from 1200. To have the year ignored, make sure that you clear both boxes.
Judges
	Judge names, eg Hutton, Denning, Ognall. We have judge names for only a relatively small proportion of cases, and then an entry may still be incomplete, particularly for older cases. This will sometimes come up trumps, but is not reliable.
Area of Law
	Our areas of law are general designations which can help to limit a search which would otherwise return too many results. The box can be cleared using the second, blank line. Please see our list of the areas of law. Two particularly need some explanation. 'Jury' cases are cases brought inot our list for (which we yet have no classification. They work as part of the database because most searches are on case names, and therefore a case can still be found. The number of such cases has come down very considerably, and will continue to do so. However, when a particular site suddenly adds fifty or mare cases to the site, we think it better to add them immediately, and work through them slowly. In general, we do not now have any jury cases from within teh last two year. 'Reference Cases' There are times when all that we are able to find out about a case to begin with is the name and a reference. If it has a place in the database because it is referred to, then we put it in as a reference case, and try to update it later as opportunity provides.
Statutes
	This is a search on the statute name and sections where available. Though it is possible sometimes to search on the section, this can be unreliable. It is often however a very good way to find starting points for case research. If you are looking directly for cases concerning a particular Act it can be the best jumping off point. As always, do not include to much detail. If you want cases of section 9 of the Theft Act 1968, 'Theft 1968' will give a starting list of cases. The section number adds nothing - '9' occurs in the year also.
Citations
	GeneralThis is a search on the references where we have them. DO NOT include brackets around the year. If you want [1994] 2 WLR 345, the best search is 1994 WLR 345. We do not have full databases for example of WLR or All ER cases. You may know a case reference of [2000] WLR 1 234. We will frequently list the case, but we may not have that reference. The search will only find what we have. This becomes more of a problem when you try to use references from more specialist reports. We try to standardise the references to case series. We strip out full stops, and insert spaces. Cases are often reported only in the year after they are heard. If you have a reference '[2001] 1 All ER 57' you may be better using the 'Year of judgment' box to look for cases between 2000 and 2001.
	Case sought	Good Search	Why	Bad Search	Why
	[2001] 2 All ER 769	2001 2 All ER 769	Well, if you are quite sure of the reference, you are doing well. Omit the brackets.	All E.R.	Punctuation will confuse the search engine. If it did find all cases in the All ER, it would find too many. Add more detail.
Summaries
	This is a search on our summary, where we have one. It is not a search against the full text of the judgment. This will always be arbitrary. Words used in summaries are not key words, but I am surprised and please just how often it does in fact turn up trumps.

Combination Searches

Sometimes you have to be canny in searching. If you want to find cases on rights to light, you might start with looking for those words in the headnote. Of course, the word 'right' appears all over the place, and you will get too many responses. The problem is solved by refining the search and using the 'area of law' field to restrict the search, for example, to cases concerning 'Land' law.

Our search facility is central to lawindexpro, and we welcome feedback on how it might be further improved.

lawindexpro is a trading name of David Swarbrick, 10 Halifax Road, Brighouse, West Yorkshire HD6 2AG, England
Tel: 0795 457 9992 or 01484 717380. email: dswarb@gmail.com or ds@lawindexpro.co.uk
Copyright and Database Rights: David Swarbrick 2011. No copyright is asserted in any material subject to Crown, Parliamentary or other copyright. We give full and grateful acknowledgement to the many judges who have applied their learning, wisdom and literary skills to develop our laws, and whose words we have so freely borrowed.

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