Improve your search results with these pro tips:

• Identify key concepts, words & phrases on your topic.
• Find introductory information to make sure you are using the right words - legal encyclopaedia are the best place to start.
• Identify alternative search words (synonyms) - use legal dictionaries & encyclopaedias for this.
• Create relationships between words & phrases using search operators (Boolean) - AND, OR, NOT and quotation marks around phrases.
• Select resources to search.
• Check the search tips in each database - they are similar but different.
• Depending on the results, refine the search if necessary.
• Evaluate the reliability of sources found.

For some more guidance on developing a search strategy, have a look at our Composing a Search Library Guide. It provides a lot of information and guidance on how to conduct effective searches. This Library Guide also includes a "search composer", that you can use to build your search on any research question. To compose your search just follow the prompts / steps. 

Want More?
Check out the online tutorial called Developing a Search Strategy from Monash University Library

The Legal Research process: 

Legal Research is very specialised, as it involves seeking a combination of sources: primary sources and secondary sources. When you have found suitable secondary sources of information, such a books, journal articles etc, it is important to keep certain things in mind. For instance, secondary sources will make reference to certain primary sources, such as Legislation and Cases. When this happens, you need to seek out those primary sources. You need to consider whether the primary sources referred to in the secondary sources are still good law and current. Read through the infographic below to find out more about the Legal Research process:

To help refine your keyword searches it is recommended that you use Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT).  These operators help connect your search terms and are used to broaden or narrow your search results.

AND - Placing AND between search terms instructs the database that both terms must appear somewhere in the results list.

NOT - When you place NOT before a keyword search it instructs the database that the keyword must not appear anywhere in the entry.

OR - Using OR between keywords instructs the database to search either or both of the keywords in the results list.

You are able to combine any of the Boolean operators to build very specific searches. You can also use other advanced database techniques such as wildcards, truncation, phrasing searching, proximity searching, to look for journal articles in the databases.