Results page

The results page will display documents matching your search query.

Results page layout

You can refine your results using the filters on the left side of the screen. These allow you to search within your results, filter by jurisdiction, filter by date, or by other filters that will vary depending on the search.

The central column of the page contains your search results.

Depending on the document type you've selected, additional information may appear in the right column.

The top of the results page shows document management buttons, such as Add to folder, Create an alert, or Download.

Understanding search results

Your search results are automatically sorted by relevance.

You can change the order of your results by using the menu at the top right of the central column. You can choose between Most cited, Most recent, Relevance, and Most visited.

In the results, you will see a paragraph from each case to quickly give you an idea of how well that document matches your search. To see more sections of the document that include your search terms, click the Show matching paragraphs icon:

When you find a document that you want to read, click on the title to view it.

Document preview

The title of the document, in blue, is at the top of the preview. Clicking it will take you straight to that document in vLex. In the example above, the document is R v Lambert.

In the top right, you can see three numbers. The grey number is the total number of times this document has been cited, that we are aware of based on our content. The green number is the number of positive treatment citations it has received, and the red number is for negative treatment citations. The example above has been cited 302 times, 15 times positively and 3 times negatively.

Beneath the title is the court for case law, or the name of the publication for books and journals. In this example, the case was heard in the House of Lords. Next to that, you might see the date it was published.

For case law, to the right of the court, there is a list of parallel citations. If vLex can show you the full text of that version of the case, the link will be underlined; if the document is not available in vLex, the citation will be underlined with a dotted line. If you want to see the name of a document, simply hover over the link.

Below the parallel citations, you can often see a brief description of the case history, including a link to any previous judgments. In the example above, the Court of Appeal judgment was confirmed in the House of Lords.

The bottom of the preview will show a snippet of the text, this is a paragraph from the case that matches your search terms.

Video walkthrough