Search Help
These are the ways you can search Case Law on ICLR.4:
- Standard search - see the tips below
- Suggested search - upload your text and ICLR Case Genie will analyse it to find relevant cases you may not have considered. It will also list the cases that feature in your text so you can make sure they are good law to cite.
Standard search
The 'Search Case Law' single search text box is on most pages.
Information below on 'Search Syntax' and 'Search Constraints' will help you define your search.
'Search Completion' means that the main search will complete as you type. It will complete on Case Names and Publication References. For example, if you type assa, the following options will be presented:
- Franses (Ian) v Somar Al Assad, Ch D 26 Oct 2007
- Assad v Fiedorczyk, Ch D 22 Apr 2004
- Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority, DC 02 Nov 2011, SC(E) 30 May 2012
- R v H (Sexual assault), CA 01 Feb 2005
- Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority (No 2)(Note), SC(E) 14 Jun 2012
Selecting an option from the completions will take you to the Index Card for that case.
You may enter search terms and press <ENTER> to submit the query. For example, entering assange and pressing <ENTER> will take you to the search results for that query. Below is a table of specialist Search Syntax.
Alternatively, you may enter a Publication Reference. A Publication Reference will not complete until it matches a publication within ICLR.4. For example, searching for [1932] AC 562 will present the following single match:
- Donoghue v Stevenson, HL(SC) 26 May 1932
Selecting this option will take you directly to the Law Report.
Suggested Search
You will probably find what you need with a standard search, but if you need an extra edge to your argument try ICLR Case Genie.
Upload a contextual document or piece of text. The system will analyse it and identify the cases you have cited and provide a searchable list of cases you might be interested in based on their similarity to your contextual text or the way they've been cited.
Load a document or text that is relevant to your legal research. This could be a skeleton argument, an opinion, a journal article, a judgment or anything else.
Case Genie analyses it to identify cases that are relevant to the issues and concepts found in the document. These cases may be similar (in subject matter or legal concepts), which we refer to as ‘suggested’ cases; or ‘linked’ (based on the way they cite or have been cited by cases similar to your document).
Upload your document by clicking on the box, dragging and dropping your file, or paste text into the text box. File formats accepted are PDF, Word and .txt. The maximum file size allowed is 10mb with a word limit of 100,000.
Once you have your list of similar or related cases, you can run a full search on them with filters and facets to dial in on exactly what you need.
* This is a new feature so please let us know if you notice something isn't working as it should, or if you have any other feedback to help us make it better.
FAQ
Q: Why won’t my file upload?
A: Please make sure your file is of .pdf .txt or .docx format. If you are uploading a text file of .txt format, please ensure it is encoded as UFT-8. You can also copy text out of your file and paste it into the textbox.
Q: Why won’t ‘drag and drop’ work?
A: Running your browser in ‘Administrator mode’ or some browser security settings will prevent drag and drop. Please disable these or click on the button to select a file instead.
Q: Why do I keep getting ‘No results found’?
A: Unfortunately we did not find any suitable results to display. You can try including a publication citation to similar case on its own line for example: [1932] AC 562, to get cited results.
Q: Why is it taking so long to produce results?
A: As the entire text is passed through a Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence pipeline, a large piece of text will take a while to process. You can break it up and search smaller sections one at a time to get results faster.
Q: Will it take Word files in .doc format?
A: No, Word files must be .docx
Search Syntax
| Syntax | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Any term | snail bottle | Match one or more terms. Adjacent terms and phrases are implicitly joined with AND. AND is the default way to combine words and phrases and is equivalent to snail AND bottle. |
| AND | snail AND bottle | Matches documents containing both the terms separated by AND. |
| "" | "ginger beer" | Terms in double quotes are treated as a phrase. If the exact phrase is not found, no results will be returned. |
| OR | ginger OR beer | Match either of two search terms. The example matches either ginger or beer. You can separate any number of terms with an OR; for example: snail OR ginger OR beer |
| () | (ginger OR beer) snail | Parentheses indicate grouping. The example matches documents containing at least one of the terms ginger or beer, and also contain the term snail |
| NEAR | (ginger OR beer) NEAR snail | At least one of the terms ginger or beer must occur within 10 terms of the word snail |
| NEAR/N | ginger NEAR/15 beer | Find documents containing matches to the queries on either side of the NEAR operator when the matches occur within N terms of each other. In this example N=15, so ginger and beer must occur within 15 words of each other in a document to be a match. |
| NOT_IN | ginger NOT_IN "ginger beer" | Match one term when the match does not overlap with another. The example matches ginger only when it does not occur in the phrase ginger beer. |
| - or NOT | ginger -beer or ginger NOT beer | A NOT operation matches documents where the term does not appear. In the example, documents where ginger occurs but where beer does not occur are matched. |
| : | caseName:snail | Finds documents that match the named constraint. In the example, the constraint is caseName and the term is snail. caseName is a configured constraint in ICLR.4. A list of constraints that can be used in searches is presented below. |
| LT | judgmentDate LT 1971-01-12 | For dates, matches the named constraint if it is less than the given date. In this example, if the Date of Judgment is less than 12 January 1971. |
| LE | judgmentDate LE 1971-01-12 | For dates, matches the named constraint if it is less than or equal to the given date. In this example, if the Date of Judgment is less than or equal to 12 January 1971. |
| GT | judgmentDate GT 1971-01-12 | For dates, matches the named constraint if it is greater than the given date. In this example, if the Date of Judgment is greater than to 12 January 1971. |
| GE | judgmentDate GE 1971-01-12 | For dates, matches the named constraint if it is greater than or equal to the given date. In this example, if the Date of Judgment is greater than or equal to to 12 January 1971. |
Search Constraints
| Constraint | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| caseName | caseName:Donoghue | Searches by Case Name. Note that partial words are not matched. |
| pubref | pubref:"[1923] AC 562" | Matches a complete publication reference. |
| catchwords | catchwords:"European arrest warrant" | Matches against the catchwords. |
| judge | judge:Ungoed-Thomas | Matches against the judges' names. |
| judgmentDate | judgmentDate GE 2000-01-01 | Matches the date of judgement. In the example, all cases on or after 1st January 2000 are matched. The format of the date must be yyyy-mm-dd. |
| yearOfJudgment | yearOfJudgment:2000 | Matches the year component of the date of judgement. |
| court | court:"HL(E)" | Matches an exact court abbreviation. |