You practice criminal defense in, let's say, North Dakota. Your client is an attorney charged with a class AA felony for stabbing his Westlaw representative to death. With an urgent need to catch up on murder in North Dakota you rent Fargo.
You already know that a mere fifteen North Dakota opinions expressly mention the controlling statutory subsection - 12.1-06-01(1). You know this because your search is built around the number assigned to the statute.
Using common sense, your no frills "advanced" Boolean query is simply: 12.1-06-01(1). That's why they call it Boolean logic.
Using Westlaw® we search the full text of North Dakota judicial opinions and retrieve 15 cases. We rerun the identical search using TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0 and receive the same 15 cases.
Of course, we might have tripped over some relevant opinions browsing Westlaw's annotations of 12.1-16-01. But this 7,819 word document identifies only eight of the 15 opinions we found earlier by simply anchoring our search query with the legislative number assigned to our controlling statutory subsection.
The Key Number System® has you chasing your tail, too.
To begin with, the several dozen key numbers assigned to various headnotes by your crack West attorney-editor, invite you to run - quite literally - in 90 different directions.
Using KeySearch®, we query North Dakota keys on the term murder. Thereafter, we are invited to substitute homicide. Westlaw serves this screen, which among other distractions, attempts to upsell us. "Did you want fries with that?"
A key number linking you to North Dakota murder cases would be nice. Not that you need the second steering wheeel, what with the benevolent North Dakota legislature providing a unique free number at no extra charge.
Using TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0 we learn that nearly 350 opinions in North Dakota contain at least one reference to the term murder or homicide. As Equalizer's results screen makes plain, approximately 300 of them make at least one reference "murder" or "homicide" and to "guilty" or "convict" or "convicted" or "sentence" or "sentenced" or sentencing"...
(murder or homicide) and (convict! or guilty or sentenc!)
...suggesting most, if not all, are criminal cases.
The vaunted Westlaw annotations of 12.1-06-01 cite a mere 43 unique opinions.
Want to read North Dakota murder cases related to your specific facts? How about the eight involving knives?
12.1-16-01 and (knife or stab!) and "West Rep!"
(Note for my readers in Wasilla: If you include "West Rep" to your query, I reserve the right to talk about you behind your back.)
On the off chance you're wondering how convicted murderer Shawn Novotny made out when he sought a discharge in bankruptcy of the $100,000 judgment entered in favor of Mr. and Mrs. Dennis as a result of his decision to shoot their daughter, Amy, in the back, I've got good news!
The headnote for that opinion is one of several gems binned among West's annotations to 12.1-16-01. The cite is 226 B.R. 211. Good luck getting to it. Unless you pay West approximately $500 a month for the bankruptcy slice. Or are otherwise intrepid enough to click outside The Plan.
(Note: All subscribers to TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0 enjoy unfettered access to all bankruptcy opinions, as part of their $48 a month (annualized) national plan.)
The annotations, as compiled by West attorney-editors, omit any reference whatsoever to nearly 50% of the judicial opinions that expressly cite your controlling statutory subsection.
And along the way they direct you to bankruptcy court. Good times. No wonder you hate legal research.
Remember the maxim that all research begins with the black letter law. Ask yourself, "Self, what is the item of information driving my search? Is it a statute, rule, regulation, case citation or some unique concept?"
Answer that question, you'll be well on your way and nobody has to get hurt.
(If you liked this review, you'll love Key Number Mythology.)
