An attorney from Fair Oaks, California recently wrote to say: "As a Westlaw user, my most valuable tool is annotized codes with click to the cited cases." (emphasis added)
     Which brings us to today's discussion regarding the terms "everything" and "complete" and "on point."
     Our client pleads guilty to wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343.  He cooperates with the authorities.  At sentencing, the Court refuses to grant the Government’s motion for a sentence reduction based on substantial assistance.
     But, our hypothetical defendant has been true to his word.  As Exhibit A, he even provides the prosecution with a copy of a brochure he's been peddling to local practitioners in his territory.  It states in relevant part: Westlaw combines "book-like indexing, browsing and viewing with links to everything discussing your statute, all in one place....[Y]our research is complete and on point." ~Westlaw® StatutesPlus™, 2009.01.21 (emphasis added)
     Wow!  Browsing and viewing?  What's next?  Paula Abdul judging a singing competition?
     Call it browsing, viewing or stumble upon.  Just don’t call it “Search.”  No matter how you cut it, annotations, key numbers and headnotes comprise a partial index of judicial opinions.  Let me show you what you’ve been missing and why.
     Our search is driven by two codified items of information: 18 U.S.C. § 1343 and U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1.  Using TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0 and advanced Boolean logic  - 18 /5 1343 and wire – we find more than three thousand opinions nationally.
     However, Westlaw's 18 U.S.C. § 1343 annotated, an 80,801 word document, aggregates approximately 1,000 so-called Notes Of Decisions in 240 categories.  Many of these headnotes direct you to the same opinion more than once.  Meaning, 1343 annotated cites less than 1,000 opinions, for wire fraud related reasons that you may or may not care about.
     Yet, we know from our earlier search that our national database of wire fraud related opinions exceeds three thousand cases.
     It is well settled that two attorneys cannot agree on the weather.  That said, I bet if you ask 20 attorneys if West statutes annotated are “complete” and “on point” they would say “yes.”  They would say this is their “most valuable tool” because “everything” is “in one place.”
     They would say that because that is what they’ve been taught by the gatekeepers of legal research, be they law professors, law librarians or on campus Westlaw trainers. 
     Let me show you the opinions the book browsers are missing by relying on Westlaw casefinders.
     We want published opinions that cite our statute and our sentencing guideline together with at least one express reference to the term “substantial assistance.”  Our query is:

     Using Westlaw we search for opinions reported in the Federal Supplement (U.S. District Courts) and receive 5 hits. Then we search the Federal Reporter (U.S. Circuits) and receive 11 hits.
     TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0 allows us to search all Federal districts and all Federal circuits in one mouse click. But, for the purposes of our side-by-side show, we run two separate searches and receive five and 12 hits, respectively.
    Our Equalizer results are sortable by court hierarchy, search term frequency, party name, recency, and citation frequency.  We could modify our search to say:

     This expands our results to include opinions that include at least one reference to one of my “or” terms, kicking us up to 29 opinions.
      It’s important to note that we are not “word guessing.”  The gatekeepers of legal research, the defenders of book-like browsing as the gold standard of legal research, love to dismiss advanced Boolean searchers as “word guessers.”
     Why would one “guess words” when one has the complete text of the controlling statute, rule, regulation, guideline or judicial opinion to force their choice of words?
     If our defendant posts a brochure on the internet in furtherance of an alleged fraudulent scheme and we filter results by adding fact driven terms – 18 /5 1343 and (brochure” or website or internet) – that is not “word guessing.”  Rather, our choices are defined by the circumstances surrounding the charged conduct. That’s why it’s called Boolean logic.
     My problem with annotations is that, contrary to Westlaw’s marketing materials, they are not complete, in one place and on point.
     Here’s our complete list of 17 opinions: United States v. Bidloff, 82 F.Supp.2d 86 (W.D.N.Y. 2000), United States v. Brown, 130 F.Supp.2d 552 (S.D.N.Y. 2001),  United States v. Dale, 991 F.2d 819 (D.C. Cir. 1993), United States v. Dowdell, 272 F.Supp.2d 583 (W.D. Va. 2003), United States v. Hamrick, 741 F.Supp. 103 (W.D.N.C. 1990), United States v. Hare, 49 F.3d 447 (8th Cir. 1995), United States v. Korman, 343 F.3d 628 (2nd Cir. 2003), United States v. Livesay, 525 F.3d 1081 (11th Cir. 2008), United States v. Lovell, 81 F.3d 58 (7th Cir. 1996), United States v. Milan, 304 F.3d 273 (3rd Cir. 2002), United States v. Napoli, 179 F.3d 1 (2nd Cir. 1999), United State v. Petersen, 98 F.3d 502 (9^th Cir. 1996), United States v. Quigley, 382 F.3d 617 (6th Cir. 2004), United States v. Schaefer, 120 F.3d 505 (4th Cir. 1997), United States v. Spedden, 917 F.Supp. 404 (E.D.Va. 1996) and United States v. Wallace, 458 F.3d 606 (7^th Cir. 2006).
     The 1343 annotations mention only Dale, supra, for a wire fraud related point of law we have no interest in. "Internal Revenue Code is not exclusive basis for tax fraud prosecutions; such fraud may also be pursued under general 'wire fraud' statute." Blah. Blah. Blah. Cf., Query Results Analysis As To Federal Appellate Courts, 2009.01.21.
     West’s decision notes fail to mention any of our remaining 16 opinions for any point of law, to say nothing of the ones we care about.
     None of the nearly 1,000 cases note § 5K1.1 in any context. Out of 80,000 words, the term "substantial assistance" is referenced once, in a single headnote. Even though 90% of § 1343 defendants plead guilty.
     Interestingly, Dale predates every other opinion on our list.  It is also the most cited of our 17 opinions.  We think because it’s the only one mentioned in the 1343 annotations.  A majority of researchers use Westlaw.  A majority of them link to authority by browsing annotations.  Very few researchers find opinions by searching the entire index with the specificity and vision set forth in our advanced Boolean query.
     Significantly, Dale is not cited by any of our remaining 16 opinions.  Think about it.  If it’s impossible to find these 16 opinions browsing the 1343 annotations and you don’t find them keyciting the one opinion you managed to stumble over, that means you don’t find them at all.  Unless you have some best practices in place for properly searching a complete index of judicial opinions that returns just what you ask for in a single mouse click.
     Equalizer explodes the gap between what Westlaw says you're browsing and what you’ve been missing all along. No matter how many hours you’re willing to waste, you cannot browse what's not there.
     You may have noticed that Westlaw red-flagged one of our cases.  United States v. Wallace, 458 F.3d 606 (7^th Cir. 2006). KeyCite tells us Wallace has been cited 155 times.  But, 108 cites are to secondary resources and electronically filed motion papers Westlaw wants to resell you. “You want fries with that?”
      What you really want to know is whether Wallace is still good law for the point of law you care about. Using TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0 we filter our search by jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit En Banc are the only two courts with the power to overrule Wallace. After click the checkboxes for these two courts, we enter: “458 F.3d 606” and 5K1.1
     Turns out Wallace has only been cited twice in the reported opinions of the Seventh Circuit. We click the most recent opinion - Bush - jump to our search term (in this case a citation) in the test of the opinion and quickly note that Bush cites Wallace for an unrelated point of law.  We click Repking, jump to our citation in the opinion text and note that Repking follows Wallace for our point of law.
     A long way of saying that notwithstanding Westlaw’s red flag, Wallace remains good law for the point of law we care about. We instantly filter out 108 documents we could care less about by using KeyCite. In another mouse click, we instantly winnow the 47 remaining Wallace hits down as a result of our decision filter by jurisdiction and the controlling search term.      
     If you Westlaw users want to do an end run around all the garbage served up by KeyCite’s virtual cash register, drill down to your database of reported opinions from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (CTA7R) and run the same query: “458 F.3d 606” & 5K1.1.
     You will receive the identical three hits - Wallace, Bush and Repking - we received using TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0
     Of course, if you care about your time, money and all of the opinions you’ve been missing browsing annotations, the ultimate end run would be to get with the program.  Our program.  TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0!