How to Come Up with Good Search Terms on a Topic You Know Nothing About

When doing any type of legal research, you rely on search terms to get at the information you need. You use these search terms in a number of ways – to formulate keyword searches in databases or online, to make use of the table of contents in treatises and other sources, or to search an index.

Sometimes it’s easy to generate a good list of search terms to get your research started. Say you are researching potential liability issues in the following situation: a five-year-old child wanders onto a neighbor’s property and sees a swimming pool; the child drowns in the pool. Is the owner of the property liable? From this scenario, you could easily come up with search terms like minor, child, or premises liability.

But what if you’re researching a complex issue that’s in an area of law you don’t know anything about? For example, what if you were asked to advise a client as to what filings must be made to manage a hedge fund? In this case, you might not be able to come up with a ready list of search terms – but this is still a crucial step in your research.

So what should you do? Consider beginning research in a secondary source such as a legal encyclopedia or specialized treatise. Spend some time just familiarizing yourself with the terminology, and write down the terms of art that you see regularly associated with hedge funds. Once you get a good list of terms, you can add these to your searches to produce better research results.