Winning Research Skills - Westlaw

Chapter 10
Searching Case Law Databases on
Westlaw
When you search full-text case law databases on Westlaw, the documents you retrieve include the
complete and accurate text of a court’s decision, order, or ruling, along with many exclusive West
editorial enhancements that help you identify relevant case law documents and evaluate their
significance. This chapter describes how you can use West editorial enhancements to your advantage
as you search Westlaw.
Westlaw Document Fields
Almost all documents on Westlaw are composed of several parts called fields. In a case law
document, for example, the title, the name of the judge, the names of the attorneys, and the opinion
are each a separate field. Certain document fields contain West editorial enhancements. For example,
■ the synopsis field (sy) provides a case summary, including procedural history and the holding of
the case
■ the topic field (to) contains hierarchical key number classification information
■ the headnote field (he) contains summaries of each point of law in a case
■ the digest field (di) is a combination of the headnote and topic fields
Westlaw document fields can help you research case law documents more effectively in several ways:
Retrieve Relevant Cases
When you are researching a legal issue, the cases you retrieve are more likely to be relevant when you
restrict your search to the concise summaries contained in the synopsis and digest fields. You can
also retrieve cases dealing with specific legal issues by using West topic and key number searches.
Retrieve Cases That Others May Miss
The synopsis, digest, topic, and headnote fields often contain terms that do not appear in the judicial
opinion. For example, a judge writing an opinion in a case involving a disputed residential lease may
refer to the parties as lessor and lessee rather than landlord and tenant. West attorney-editors may
classify the case under the West digest topic Landlord and Tenant, or they may use the terms
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