Legal Research Tools: Find Cases by Citation

Loislaw provides two efficient shortcuts for conducting a case search — Find Cases by Citation and SelectCite — when subscribers know the citation in advance.

Find Cases by Citation

Find A Case allows direct retrieval of single or multiple citations. To retrieve a single citation known in advance, simply type it into the Find Cases by Citation dialog box near the top of Loislaw's main browser window. For multiple citations, place a space in between each citation being researched.

The forgiving feature of Find Cases by Citation: 'normalization' of citations

Find Cases by Citation does not require a strict match between a user's entry and an official citation. While the entry needs to approximate the form of an official citation, Find Cases by Citation will often work without regard to punctuation or minor typos; users may actually omit periods or spaces (for example) and still retrieve the correct document.

In a process called 'normalization', Find Cases by Citation compares irregular citations or variants entered by the user to many known forms of official citations. Within a certain range of variation, Find Cases by Citation will select the right form, normalize the user's entry, and retrieve the desired case.