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Simple Universal Search

Performing a search in vLex is very simple. In the search bar located at the top of the page you will find an intelligent search engine, which uses algorithms to understand legal concepts and quickly show you the most relevant results.

1. Select jurisdiction

The platforms allows users to view content from more than 130 countries, without needing to switch between subscriptions, all in a multilingual environment.

From the jurisdiction section you can choose to search in multiple jurisdiction or just one, according to your needs.

By default, the search will be performed in the same jurisdiction as your user account. You can choose one, multiple, or all countries to find more or less content. Any content not available in your subscription can be accessed using vLex credits.

When you start to enter your search criteria, the predictive search engine and autocomplete will automatically start to show you relevant results.

The results are presented in the following order:

  • Main results
  • Popular searches (search recommendations based on popular searches by other users)
  • Featured documents
  • Featured SmartTopics
  • Sources or publications

If any of these documents is the one you are looking for, you can simply click it and in moments you will have access to your desired document.

If you want to see all of the search results (and not only the pre-selected results in the predictive search engine) you must click “return” to perform the search.

On the left side of the page there are different filters, including filters for different content collections (i.e. legislation, case law, statutes, forms, books & journals, and news). To learn more about filters and how to best refine your results, please click here.

3. Search within your subscription’s content or choose to include all content

When performing a search in a selected jurisdiction, the system will search across all of the available content from that country by default. Occasionally, content that is not within your subscription may appear in your list of search results. If you prefer, you can change your settings so that you only see content from your subscription, as seen in the image below.

Advanced search

For more a complex search, and as an alternative to the filtering system, you can also use the Advanced Search feature.

This post is also available in: Español

Updated on February 11, 2020

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