I should be obliged if a LEXIS-NEXIS expert could shed some light on the
following search conundrum I have just encountered. Her in Australia there is
a well-known broadcaster by the name of John Laws, who has been involved in a
certain amount of litigation, leading to reported decisions. I was
endeavouring to locate every case to which he had been a party, and
accordingly selected the COMCAS library and AUSCAS file. I then entered the
following search:-
name(laws)
to which LEXIS-NEXIS responded with 97 "hits". Of these, the bulk were cases
with the word "law" in the title, such as "Law Society". I then sought to do
a "modify", by adding "and not law" - but LEXIS-NEXIS still refused to
confine its "hits" to the name "laws". Finally, I tried the following:-
(name(laws)) and not (name(law))
but that fared no better.
Is there any way whereby I can achieve my aim to find the surname "Laws" (and
not "law" as well) in the title of a case ? I considered the possibility of
the following:-
name(plural(laws))
but rejected it, because admitting the possibility of the existence of more
than one John Laws depressed me too much !!
TIA
Ron Huttner
Lecturer In Computerised Legal Research
Faculty Of Law
University Of Melbourne
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