Lexis LAW PreDiscovery - Searching
Going to Tools . . . Search Records in LAW brings up the Database Query Builder. This tool allows you to search multiple terms and structure complicated Boolean queries, grouping and ungrouping conditions as shown in the below example.
As you can see a full text search can be performed as well. The search results can be sent directly to a batch process or an export utility. The entire parent/child groups of documents can be returned regardless of whether or not each document in the family matches the terms in the query. With SQL databases you can choose the 'NOLOCK' option so the the results will not change as the database gets updated.
LAW also includes options for searching for MS Word documents with more than one revision; Word and Excel files containing track changes; and in the 'TextPStatus' field filtering out files that either did or did have text extracted during the TIFF conversion process.
If you have an Access based LAW database, you will not be able to run full text searches at all. A LAW SQL database will be able to select keywords from a Dictionary. In addition to stem and fuzzy searches, LAW can perform phonic searches and return words that are pronounced similarly to your search term. In the search results you have the option of displaying a 'HitsByWord' field which lists each term that comes up in a document followed by the number of times it appears. This is a good way of getting a quick look at which documents are most responsive, that is not so common in document databases.
At C:\Program Files (x86)\Law50\DTConfig you can find a file named, noise.dat which contains noise words - words that that will not be returned in LAW search results unless they are put in quotes with other strings. This file can be modified, but all documents should be re-indexed after doing so.
The Full Text Search Reports lists multiple searches run by the user, indicating the number of unique hits in each successive search. This is a good way to judge when searches are getting diminishing returns, and you've done your due diligence in the collection process.
LAW can generate reports breaking down searches showing the number of hits in each custodian's data archive.
