Use Special Boolean Commands to Get Better Results

The good news is that Lexis+ has so many sources and massive amounts of documents.

The bad news is that Lexis+ has so many sources and massive amounts of documents.

In other words, while it’s great that what is being searched is so expansive, that also means that results could be overwhelming.

To be more precise is to get more relevant results. However, precision does not always mean one has to create a complex search. LexisNexis has precision special commands to help.

The CAPS command is used to tell the system that the term following it must have one or more capital letters. It’s best used when one has a word that can also show up as someone’s name or the name of a company or product. 
caps(apple) finds instances of the word when it’s capitalized (e.g. Apple as in Apple Computer)

*Note that the word could have a different capital letter than the first letter.

The NOCAPS command does the opposite – none of the letters in the word are capitalized.
nocaps(apple) finds instances where the word is not capitalized (e.g. apples, as in the fruit)

The ALLCAPS command is especially useful when the term one is looking for is an abbreviation/acronym for a phrase.
allcaps(RICO) finds instances of the abbreviation for “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations” rather than someone named Rico (or, generally, Puerto Rico).

*Note that if the same abbreviation is used for more than one phrase, one should add additional terms – don’t forget you can easily do that in Search within.

The ATLEAST command allows one to tell the system that you are looking for a term or phrase to appear a minimum number of times. The number can be any from 2 – 250.
Atleast10(Facebook)

One can combine the at least command with any of the caps commands: 
Atleast5(caps(apple))

*Note that if you’ve used the at least command in the initial search, and the number of results is still too high, you may repeat it in Search within using ever larger numbers.

For more information, download the News Research Guide available on the InfoPro landing page (and here’s the direct link to it: https://lexisnexis.widen.net/content/ggpbvb7zde/pdf/News-Research-Guide.pdf

If you have any questions, contact your Knowledge & Research Consultant, your account team, or your law school Lexis representative!