WestlawNext: More Results if Narrow by Jurisdiction Before the Search than Filtering by Jurisdiction Afterward

Here is something I recently discovered about WestlawNext:  If you run a Westsearch (natural language) on all jurisdictions, then subsequently limit by jurisdiction, you may get less  results than if you limited by jurisdiction up front.   When I ran a natural language search: lost mislaid property for all jurisdictions and then limited cases to Ohio, I got 26 cases.  If I started off limiting the jurisdiction to Ohio (not including related federal), I got 35 cases for the same search.   The Westlaw Reference Attorneys informed me that when the pool you are searching is bigger, the Westsearch algorithm requires results to have more relevance.

If you are really only interested in one jurisdiction, and are pretty sure authority exists in your jurisdiction, you may want to limit by that jurisdiction up front.  Even if you do not find exactly what you want in your jurisdiction, you could use the key number system and change the jurisdiction for the key number results to get results from another jurisdiction.

westlawjurisdiction1
Limit to Ohio First – 35 cases
westlawjurisdiction2
Search all jurisdictions, then limit to Ohio – 26 cases