Friday, September 30, 2016

The abomination that is "smart search"

In the old days, if you wanted to search for a word in the Virginia Code online, you put in the word and what you got was limited to that word only. Put in "transfer" and you got no "transferring" or "transferee." In the name of progress, this is no more, at least not by default. The same progressive impulse that requires me to insert "adv:" before any WestlawNext search, so that each one of the search results will include the terms that I am searching. It considered an "advanced" search when you are researching a section of the Code to expect that the Code section will be cited in each case.