OnLAW® User's Guide

How to find your way around the application
How to browse a title or collection
Performing a search
Learn more about the different searches
Reviewing the results list
Reviewing a result document
Understanding the ranking of your search results
Linking to California cases and codes
Attorney-drafted forms
Other file formats in OnLAW
Printing
Technical Support

How to find your way around the application

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How to browse a title or collection

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The Table of Contents is located in the window on the left side of the OnLAW application (Available Publications). When you first launch OnLAW, it will display the law areas containing the title(s) you have purchased.

What to do if you can’t see the Table of Contents

To browse your titles:

  1. Go to the Table of Contents (Available Publications) located on the left side of the screen.
  2. Click on the plus sign [+] to the left of a law area to see the available publications.
  3. Click on the plus sign [+] to the left of a publication title to see chapter titles.
  4. Click on the plus sign [+] to the left of a chapter title to see the section titles.

When you find a section you want to read, click on the title and the text will display in the Document window. Click the minus sign [–] to collapse or close each layer of the contents.


To collapse the entire Table of Contents, select Available Publications at the top of the Table of Contents and click on your browser’s refresh button or select View/Refresh from the dropdown menu. Refreshing the Table of Contents will also clear your search.


When viewing a document in the Document window:

Performing a search

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You have a choice of four different searches: Word l Case l Statute l Form

Learn more about the different searches

  1. Click on the Search tab and click on the type of search you want to perform.
  2. Enter your search term(s).
  3. If you want to limit your search to specific sections, titles, or law areas, check boxes in the Table of Contents.
  4. Choose to display your search results sorted by rank or alphabetically by law area and publication title.
  5. Click the Search button and a list of documents containing your search term(s) will appear in the Results window.

Learn more about the different searches

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Word Search

Word Search is OnLAW’s default search screen.
Remember you can limit your search by checking boxes in the Table of Contents.

Search for “these words near each other” is based on the number of search terms, multiplied by 5.
Example: “marital charitable deduction” would return results where these terms are within 15 words of each other (3 words x 5 = 15).

Choose to display your search results sorted by rank or alphabetically by law area and publication title.
Find all word forms (e.g. run, running, ran) expands your results to include different forms of your search term(s).
Find synonyms expands your results to include synonyms for your search term(s).

Note: OnLAW search does not regard hyphenated terms as word forms (e.g., non-exempt is not a word form of nonexempt). To return results with both hyphenated and non-hyphenated forms of the word (e.g., enter both “non-exempt, nonexempt” as search terms).

Case Search

The Case Search finds all instances where a case is cited in the title(s) you own (Available Publications).

You can search by case name or citation.
When searching for a case by name, you must enter at least one complete word from the case name (e.g., Smith).
When searching for a case by citation, be sure to use the specific format.

Choose to display your search results sorted by rank or alphabetically by law area and publication title.
Remember you can limit your search by checking boxes in the Table of Contents.

Statute Search

The Statute Search finds all instances where a code section is cited in the title(s) you own (Available Publications).

  1. Select the code you want to search.
  2. Enter a code section.
  3. Click Search.

Choose to display your search results sorted by rank or alphabetically by law area and publication title.
Remember you can limit your search by checking boxes in the Table of Contents.

Form Search

A Form Search looks for attorney-drafted forms and clauses, sample agency forms, and Judicial Council forms.
Choose to display your search results sorted by rank or alphabetically by law area and publication title.
Remember you can limit your search by checking boxes in the Table of Contents.

Reviewing the results list

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At the top of the results list, you will see how many results your search returned and a reference to the search terms used.



When displaying the results sorted by rank, each result consists of:

Learn more about the ranking of your search results



When displaying the results sorted alphabetically by law area and publication title, each result consists of:



Use the toolbar buttons to navigate forward and back through the results list.

You can control how much of the document excerpt is displayed by changing excerpts to None | Short | Medium | Long.

Click on a document title or bold search term to review that document.

Reviewing a result document

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When you select a document from the results list, the document displays in the Document window with the search term(s) highlighted.
Click Previous | Next to navigate forward and back through the text.
Click Previous Result | Next Result to navigate to the previous or next search result in your list.
Click Clear Search to clear all search results, search terms, checkboxes and highlights in the document.
Click the Results tab to return to the results list.

Note: Search sessions time out after 60 minutes of inactivity.

Understanding the ranking of your search results

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The OnLAW search engine uses relevancy to determine the ranking of documents displayed in the results list. Ranking covers a range of percentages from 100% to 0%. If the document rank is 100%, it is the most relevant. Word Search uses a combination of relevancy and Boolean commands (and, or, not, near) to determine the rank.

The four methods used for determining relevancy are:

Local frequency

This means that the more often a search term appears in a document, the more relevant that document is. For example, a document containing five instances of a search term is more relevant than a document containing only two instances of that search term.

Inverse document frequency

This means that terms that are rare within the context of the entire collection are given a higher relevancy ranking. For example, assume you are searching for two terms, "government" and "policy" within a collection containing 20,000 documents. If "government" is found only five times and "policy" is found 300 times, then documents containing "government" are given a higher weight when determining relevancy.

Document length comparison (density)

This means that shorter documents containing an equal number of search terms are more relevant than longer documents. Since the terms appear closer together in a shorter document, there is a higher chance that the document is relevant to your search.

Completeness

This means that documents containing more of the search terms are more relevant. For example, if your search contains four terms, a document which contains all four terms is more relevant than a document that only contains three.

If your search term is too broad, one document is not seen as more relevant than another and the search engine will return a rank of 0% for all results in the list. Narrow your search terms to return a ranked list.


Linking to California cases and codes

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Cases

CEB provides links to California Supreme Court and appellate court cases since 1934. Click on the link in the text and a new browser window will open to display the opinion. You can link further to any California case cited within the opinion by clicking on the citation.

Sample case:

Codes

Click on the code link in the text and a new browser window will open to display the code section. You can navigate back and forth through the code by clicking the Previous code section or Next code section links.

Sample code:

Attorney-drafted forms

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OnLAW titles include sample attorney-drafted forms, Judicial Council forms, and images such as graphs and diagrams to illustrate points discussed in the text.

Many of the attorney-drafted clauses and sample forms from the text are also available to download in Word or WordPerfect file formats so you can edit and save them on your computer. You can also select any text displayed in the Document window and copy and paste it into your word processor.

Note: Some forms (e.g., Judicial Council forms) are delivered as graphic images as opposed to text. These forms are intended to be viewed or printed and cannot be edited with a word processor.

To download an attorney-drafted form:

  
  1. Right click on the download button that precedes the form text and select Save Target As.
  2. Browse to the location on your computer where you want to save the file and click Save.

In some cases, consecutive form clauses make up a complete form. For convenience, the clauses have been combined into a single document and the download buttons are preceded by the following notice:

The form text in this section is part of a larger form. For your convenience, downloading any one of the sections included in the form will download the entire form. The inclusive section numbers are §§x.xx-x.xx.

Other file formats in OnLAW

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Word (.doc)  Attorney-drafted clauses and forms in selected titles
WordPerfect (.wpd)  Attorney-drafted clauses and forms in selected titles
Excel (.xls)  Downloadable Excel spreadsheets appear in California Trust Administration
Adobe Reader (.pdf)  Reporter indexes and the Checklist of Objections in California Trial Objections

Printing

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OnLAW’s printing feature allows you to print single or multiple documents as well as the current view in the Search and Results screens.

Printing documents

Click on Print located in the top right corner of the screen to bring up the print toolbar in the Document window.

Print this document

  1. Select Print this document.
  2. Click the Print button.

Print multiple documents

  1. Select Print multiple documents.
  2. Select the documents you want to print by checking boxes in the Table of Contents.
  3. Click the Print button.

A print preview window containing the document(s) will open followed by your browser’s print dialog box. Click Print on the print dialog box to print the document(s).





Printing current view

Click on Print located in the top right corner of the screen to bring up the print dialog box to print the current view of the Search or Results screen.

  1. Click the Print button to bring up your browser’s print dialog box.
  2. Click Print on the print dialog box to print the search screen.

Note: On the Results screen, you can print only the current 20 results. To print the next 20 results, go to the next page of the results list.

Printing graphic images

Some forms (e.g., Judicial Council forms) are delivered as graphic images as opposed to text. These forms are intended to be viewed or printed and cannot be edited or filled.


  1. Click the print button preceding the image. The image will display followed by the print dialog box.
  2. Click Print on the print dialog box.
  3. Click on the title of the form in the Table of Contents to return to the normal view.

Technical Support

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CEB Technical Support

Call Technical Support if you are having technical problems or need assistance using OnLAW.

Phone: 1-800-750-9155
Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00am to 5:30pm PT
E-mail: tech_support@ceb.ucop.edu

Visit the OnLAW support pages for up-to-date information and answers to frequently asked questions.

CEB Customer Service

Call Customer Service if you have questions about your subscription, want to add additional titles or user licenses , or have general questions about CEB products and services.

Phone: 1-800-232-3444
Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00am to 5:30pm PT
E-mail: customer_service@ceb.ucop.edu

System Requirements

Windows® 2000/XP/Vista
Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 6 or higher browser (cookies and java enabled)
Internet connection

How to enable cookies and java in your browser

You must enable cookies and java for OnLAW to function properly in your browser.

ENABLE COOKIES

  1. Go to Tools/Internet Options/Privacy.
  2. Click the Default button to select Medium privacy.
  3. Click Apply and then OK to close the dialog box.


ENABLE JAVA
To see the Table of Contents, you must enable Java on your browser.

  1. Go to Tools/Internet Options/Advanced.
  2. Scroll down and check Java (Sun).
  3. Click Apply and then OK to close the dialog box.
  4. Restart your computer to enable Java.

Note:  Sun Java is not distributed as a part of your operating system and may need to be downloaded and installed before you can enable it.   Download and Install Sun Java now

Firewalls and Pop-up Blockers

OnLAW is a Web-based application and can therefore be affected by firewalls such as ZoneAlarm®, McAfee® Personal Firewall, and Norton™ Personal Firewall and pop-up blockers such as those found on the Google™ and Yahoo!® toolbars. Refer to your firewall or popup blocker Help for assistance or call CEB Technical Support at 1-800-750-9155.