How Do I Search and Navigate in Lexis+ Practical Guidance?

In the Practical Guidance materials on the Lexis+^® service, you can browse and navigate through the available material or run a search to find materials meeting your search criteria.

Click Practical Guidance on the left side of the page to see the Practical Guidance What task would you like to accomplish today? page.

For information on how to perform these functions using a screen reader, see How do I Search and Navigate in Lexis+ Practical Guidance using a screen reader.
 

Browsing Practical Guidance Content

You can navigate through Practice Areas, then navigate through different Tasks to retrieve Practice Notes, Forms, Clauses, Checklists, Articles, and other Secondary Materials. Once you get to the results, you can use the filters under Narrow By to narrow the list of documents as necessary.

You can also navigate through Content Type, Jurisdiction, or Industry tasks. Clicking through the different options under each tab retrieves all documents associated with the Content Type, Jurisdiction, or Industry.

Note: As you navigate through Practice Areas, the pre-search filter is automatically set to the page you are viewing. For example, when you navigate to the Labor & Employment task page, the filter is automatically set to Labor & Employment.

Searching Practical Guidance Content

Running your search is easy and intuitive. Enter your search terms in the search box and search through all available content or use filters from the search box to search in certain practice areas.

You can use plain language searches, similar to using internet search engines, or Boolean searches. After you the click Search, the service determines to run the search as natural language or terms & connectors depending on the terms you entered.
Note: Plain language (natural language) searches tend to work best in Practical Guidance.

Take the following steps to create a search in Practical Guidance:

1. Enter your terms in the search box, using plain language (natural language) or Boolean connectors (terms & connectors). You can enter up to 5,000 characters.
   Note: As you enter terms, you will see up to 10 suggested documents and legal phrases to use in your search. Click a suggested document to open that document, or click an applicable phrase to add the phrase to your search.
2. (Optional) Select 1 or more of the following options:
   1. (Optional) Select a practice area filters.
   2. (Optional) Select jurisdiction filters.
3. Click the Search button.

On the Lexis+ service, when you run a search under Legal Research, your results include Practical Guidance materials. Under the Select Category drop-down menu, select Practice Notes and Articles or Annotated Templates and Checklists to see the Practical Guidance content.

Additional Information about Natural Language and Terms & Connectors

Natural language: You can use plain language to create a natural language search. You can enter your search using the terms or questions you use when discussing your topic or you can use just the most important keywords or phrases. For example, you could enter either of the following search if you are researching the valuation of a leveraged buyout:

• How is the valuation determined for a leveraged buyout?
• leveraged buyout valuation

For more information on natural language searches, see Using Natural Language .

Terms & connectors: If you want to define the relationship between your search terms you can use a terms & connectors search. Connectors you can use include and, or, and not, and proximity connectors such as w/n. For example, you could enter the following search if you are researching violations of RICO in the corn, wheat, and soy industries:

You can also use commands such as atleast to further restrict your search. For more information on this functionality, see Using Terms & Connectors and Using Search Commands .

For additional information, the following articles provide additional details:

• How Do I Search for Variations of Words?
• Using Symbols and Special Characters in Your Search