One of the largest changes and newest tool of Westlaw Precision is "Precision Research." Precision Research starts with the classification and tagging of thousands of cases in select legal topics. These cases have been tagged for legal issues, similar facts, parties, causes of action and types of motions.
The tagging and classification allow a researcher to filter cases by the following "precision attributes":
TIP: The majority of the tagged cases are from 2010 to present and a few select, older, leading cases. This means that not all relevant cases can currently be found through this filter. Make sure you factor in the fact that some pre-2010 cases will not be present in search results if you use the precision attributes.
Below is a quick example of how to use Precision Research to look up cases.
Step 1: Click on the "Start Precision Search" on the homepage. This will lead you to the screen below, where you can select a topic of law and the jurisdiction on the right hand side of the screen. We will not change jurisdiction from "All State& Federal" for this example.
Once you have selected an area of law you can either start a search with key words in "Search All," or move to "Search By Attribute." In this case, select "Search By Attribute"
Step 2: Once you have selected "Search By Attribute" you can review the options you have and select those that apply to the legal issue and questions you are researching.
Step 3: Type in the word "premises" in the "Legal Issue " search bar. Several different legal issues often associated with premises liability cases will pop up. Here we see possible legal issues such as, "existence of duty, knowledge of condition, etc." Select "existence of duty" like the example below.
Scroll down further and you can also select a cause of action. Here we selected "Failure to Warn." After selecting these two attributes we will already have some results. On the far-right hand side it shows there are 47 cases that have been classified as addressing the issue of existence of duty that also involve failure to warn causes of action.
Step 4: You will be presented with several cases. The precision attributes will be attached to different headnotes, not just the case. Your results should look like this:
