Search Tips

The Search Form enables you to search for documents containing a particular phrase or, one or more keywords. The documents found will be listed on a separate page in order of the most relevant to the least relevant. The listings will contain hyperlinks to those documents together with a brief outline of what the document contains.

To begin the search, enter one or more keywords you are looking for (in a document) into the text box. Click on the "Search" button to begin the search. The search engine will retrieve documents that contain some or all the words in the phrase. To retrieve only documents that contain a phrase, surround the phrase in double quotes.

Example 1:
Entering the keywords Domestic Violence will retrieve documents containing one or more of the following keywords: Domestic, Violence, and Domestic Violence.

Example 2:
Entering the phrase "Domestic Violence" will retrieve only documents containing the phrase "Domestic Violence".

To restrict your search to a single section of the website select the section you want from the drop down list box. The drop down list box is located above the "Reset" button. The following is a description of the options available.

• Entire Site - Will search the entire website for the document.
• Information About The Law - Will only search in the Information About The Law section of the website.
• Getting Legal Help - Will only search in the Getting Legal Help section of the website.
• About Us - Will only search in the About Us section of the website.

Clicking the Reset button will clear any text entered in the text box.

Boolean operators

You can use the Boolean operators "AND", "OR" and "NOT" within your keywords to refine your search. Use the "NOT" operator only after the "AND" operator. The "NOT" operator is used to exclude documents that match a previous content restriction.

The table below list the Boolean operators and their associated symbols;

The following table shows some examples of the use of Boolean operators;