Narrow or Filter Search Results

If your search has resulted in a large answer set, you can narrow your results to the documents most relevant to your search by using any of the filters in the Narrow By pane on the left side of your results.

Specifically, you can use the Search Within Results filter to find documents within your results that contain specific search terms. For instance, if you entered the search terms: dog bite liability and your answer set is very large, you might enter the terms: assumed risk to narrow the results to only documents that also contain those terms.

You can also use the other filters located in the Narrow By pane to limit your results to a specific subset, such as a specific time frame, location, or source. See the table below for more information about using filters.

Note:

  • If you are viewing your results in the Cases category, Category is not displayed in the Narrow By pane because your results are already narrowed to the Cases category and can't be narrowed any further. However, some categories, such as Analytical Materials can be further narrowed down, so the subcategories are displayed under Category when you are viewing your results in the Analytical Materials category.

  • Documents may appear in more than one category. For instance, case law documents would appear in the "Cases" category, in one of the jurisdictions, one of the sources, and would also contain a number of keywords and/or citations.

After running a search and reviewing your results:

If you want to... Do this
Narrow your results to documents that contain or exclude a specific search term or a legal citation Select Include or Exclude, and then enter your search terms or a citation in the box under Search Within Results. Then select OK.
Narrow your results by the other filters in the Narrow By pane Click the item under a filter heading (such as Category, Legal Topic, Jurisdiction, etc.) that you want to restrict your results to, and select OK. For instance, to restrict your results to a specific location, select Location.
Narrow by more than one category under a filter Click Select multiple, select the checkboxes for the categories you want to narrow your results to, and select OK.
Restrict your results to a particular date range Under the Timeline filter of the Narrow By pane, use your mouse to move either of the sliders to the left or right until the date range you want is displayed, or enter the dates in the the year fields, and select OK.
Return to a previous results set Click the X next to your selections at the top of the Narrow By pane to close that version of your results.
Return to your original results after narrowing them one or more times Click the Clear link at the top of the Narrow By pane.
Find your original or Search Within Results search terms in a document Open a document from your results, and select the terms you want to find from the Navigate tool at the top right side of the document.

Note: Each time you narrow your results, the results are cumulative. For instance, you can narrow your results to Cases, then to a specific time line within those cases, and then to a specific jurisdiction or court within those cases in the timeline.