University of Illinois College of Law
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University of Illinois College of Law |
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Introduction
to Online Legal Research (Westlaw and Lexis)
Professor Callister
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Session:
Fall
- Spring
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Westlaw: Natural Language Searches |
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W1 |
 |
| Both
Lexis and Westlaw have "Natural Language" searching capability. Natural
language works by an algorithm which weighs terms according to their rareness--the
rarer the term, the higher the score. Documents are searched and
scored using this mechanism. Additional weight is given if the document
contains search terms that are proximate to each other. The default
search output is not by date (which is the default for "terms and connector"
searches") but by relevance score.
Natural language searching contrasts with terms and connectors searching in that in the latter, the search terms all have equal rate and must be present (or not present) as dictated by the search string. Here's how natural language works . . . |
