Sharpening Your Information Skills for Legal Placement

• The exact spelling of the case name is not known. After trying all possibilities, you still cannot locate it.
• The keywords you use either retrieve too little or too many results, or sometimes totally irrelevant results.

• Before entering search terms, select the appropriate field first.
• Correct field for party name: Case Name (Lexis), Party Names (Westlaw)
• Correct field for fact of case: Catchwords/Headnotes (Lexis), Subject/Catchword (Westlaw)

• Proper use of search connectors.

Search connectors help you define the relationship between the search terms so as to improve the precision and relevance of the results.

• And  = Search terms in the same document.
• Or = Either search term or both in the same document.
• " " = Search terms inside the quotation marks to appear in the document as a phrase.
• /s = Search terms in the same sentence.
• /p  = Search terms in the same paragraph.
• /n  = Search terms within "n" terms of each other, "n" being a numeric value.
• Truncation mark !  = To retrieve any term starting with the root term.

Consult these search guides to learn more about search connectors:

Lexis+ Hong Kong guide

Westlaw Asia guide

• When you don't have the complete/exact case names, try using the truncation symbol "!".

By entering this search string: Int! and Translink

You will get this case: Italia Maritime Spa v Translink Shipping (HK) Ltd.

• To look for cases related to breach of director's duty causing losses, try this search string.

In the subject or catchword field, enter: director /5 duty

In the free text field, enter: loss!