massachusetts legal-research case-law
How to find case law for a particular subject
<p>How can I find case law for a particular subject in my state (Massachusetts)?</p>

<p>I have access to Lexis/Nexis, but my experience is that subject searches rarely work. For example, one topic I need to research is the case law on illegible citations. I received a moving violation and the charge was written illegibly. I did a search on Lexis using the keywords:</p>

<pre><code>MA citation illegible
</code></pre>

<p>and it returned no results. I tried many other logical combinations of words, but they invariably returned no hits.</p>

<p>If you know a case citation then Lexis is fine, but how can I find the relevant cases in the first place?</p>

<p>My experience has been that finding case law is a bit hit and miss (pun intended). The most effective method that I have found is to start with the conceptually broadest search, and narrow it down by further sub-searches. There are 7 findable MA cases pertaining to "traffic citation" (Lexis search seems to be non-stupid in terms of grammatically relates forms like the plural "citations"). "Traffic citation" gives a large set of cases, then you can select teh MA specific cases on the left side (or, check-box the jurisdiction under advanced search). Then you can apply further terms to that subset in the "search within results" box. I find it generally best to start with general concepts and narrow them down subsequently. Within reason: "crime" will give over 1000 citations and it seems to give up if there are more than 1000 citations. This, at any rate, is based on my experience with freeby academic Lexis, which ain't the most powerful tool in the drawer.</p>
