LEGAL SEARCH OPERATORS

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1 LEGAL SEARCH OPERATORS Bloomberg Law's Legal Search is powered by a full range of Boolean operators and connectors that allow you to construct strings to locate documents of interest. For information on the operators for Bloomberg Law News Search, please consult the News Search Operators. You can also view the Legal Search Operators as a PDF. General Guidance: Keywords are automatically joined with an AND in es without operators. Misspellings and common errors like missing parentheses are corrected (note: three characters or less in length will not be corrected for misspellings, and words in all capital letters are not corrected). Unquoted keywords that are abbreviations or common agency acronyms are automatically expanded. Legal es on Bloomberg Law ignore common words, such as "of," be," "and," or "the." To for a phrase containing such terms, place the phrase in quotation marks. Search Operators Operator Syntax Description Example Notes None Terms entered in the Keywords SECURITIES FRAUD KNOWLEDGE field without an operator will interpret them containing securities joined by AND AND fraud AND knowledge Inclusion (AND) AND both terms/phrases. CHANGE AND "RES JUDICATA" containing both "change" and "res judicata." Keywords are automatically joined with an AND in es without Boolean expanders or connectors. Alternative (OR) OR at least one of the terms/phrases. If operators are used in the query the quotation marks are not needed (e.g. promissory estoppel AND fraud) DEFAULT OR FORECLOSURE containing either "default" or "foreclosure."

2 Exclusion (NOT) NOT AND NOT BUT NOT that do not contain the identified COLLATERAL NOT ESTOPPEL containing "collateral' and not containing "estoppel." The NOT operator must follow other. For example, NOT REMOVAL is not a valid but DEFAULT NOT REMOVAL is valid. To construct an exclusive OR (where one term or the other appears, but not both), combine the NOT operator with the OR operator. Exact Phrase " an exact phrase. STANDARD AND "EXPEDITED PROCEEDING" containing "standard" and the phrase "expedited proceeding." For example, (notice OR appearance) NOT (notice AND appearance). You must use quotation marks if no other operators are present and you want two or more terms to be interpreted as a phrase.if your contains operators or common words (e.g., " and seizure"), the terms must be enclosed in quotation marks. The use of quotation marks will override any operators or potential abbreviation expansion contained inside of the quotes.

3 Case Sensitive Exact Phrase ^ " " Returns case sensitive results an exact phrase. ^"Securities Fraud" containing "Securities Fraud" not the lowercase phrase "securities fraud" Combination Searches ( ) Used to nest multi-part es and control the order in which operations are performed. TRADE SECRETS AND (DISCOVERY OR ACQUISITION) containing either "trade secrets' and "discovery," or "trade secrets" and "acquisition." If nested parentheses are used, operations in the inner-most parentheses will be performed first. Single-Character Wildcard * Returns recognized terms that match any single character in the middle or at the end of a word. FACT* containing "facts" but not "fact." Single-Character Wildcards must replace a letter. Multiple-Character Wildcard/Expander! Returns recognized terms that match any number of characters in the middle or end of a word. FACT! including "fact," "'facts," and "factual." COM!AL returns results including "commercial," "communal," "computational." Multiple-Character Wildcards must replace a letter but will return the root of the word if it has a match. N/x /x W/x within a specified range of a term, regardless of the order in which the terms appear. (MOTION n/3 APPROVE) n/5 COLLATERAL containing "motion" located within three words of "approve" and "collateral" located within five words of either "motion" or "approve." The N/x operator cannot be mixed with the NP/x operator in a. value of X is 255. When using phrases in proximity es, proximity is measured from the last word of phrases. Ordered NP/x within a specified range TRANSCRIPT NP/5 CLERK The NP/x operator cannot be mixed with the N/x operator in a

4 PRE/x +x of a term in a specified order. containing "transcript" followed by "clerk" within five words.. value of X is 255. Sentence S/ /S within the same sentence. MOTION S/ DENIED where both "motion" and "denied" appear in the same sentence. /SENT Paragraph P/ /P /PARA within the same paragraph. RESPONDENT P/ ANSWER where both "respondent" and "answer" appear in the same paragraph. At Least ATLx Alternative: ATLEASTx with at least a specified number of occurrences of a ATL5(FORUM SHOPPING) containing at least 5 occurrences of "forum shopping." Multiple ATLx operators can be used in a phrase and different values can be used for x. When using the ATLx operator in conjunction with other, AND or OR operators must be used. For example, AGREEMENT AND ATL5(SOFTWARE) containing "agreement" and at least 5 occurrences of "software." At Most ATMx with at most a specified number of occurrences of a ATM5(FRAUD) containing at most 5 occurrences of "fraud." value of X is 225. Multiple ATMx operators can be used in a phrase and different values can be used for x.

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