Volume II, Chapter §2.3
The Foundations of Legal Research

Cartwheeling: Word Association

§2.3
		Introduction
		Paralegal Perspectives
		Lecture Notes
		Answers to Questions in the Manual
		Exercises

Introduction
"Cartwheeling" is a word association technique. It is simply a way to increase the odds that you will locate relevant material within an index.

Generally, two things will determine the success of your research within an index (or using a search query).

The quality of the index
Some indexes are well developed, but many are not. But whatever the case, you are stuck with it.

Your ability to cartwheel
Since the editors of indexes may refer to terms in different ways, the researcher must be flexible enough to find alternative terms and phrases that cover the same material. This is cartwheeling.

Let's say the term being researched is privilege. Before going to the index, we cartwheel the term. Ask whether there are any other terms that mean the same thing. Are there any terms that are related? Are there any related agencies that could be researched? Are there any opposites?

Here is what we come up with:

privilege
communication
testimony
witness

Now, we certainly don't want to overlook the obvious, so we start with privilege. If there is nothing there, we look under communication.

If we find communication, we should look for privilege as a subtopic. If we don't find communication, we should look up testimony.

If we are able to find testimony, we should look for privilege as a subtopic under testimony. Or we should look for communication as a subtopic. Or witness. And so forth.

Take each term, and cartwheel it until you have exhausted all terms.

Paralegal Perspectives . . .

CARTWHEELING
To cartwheel is to come up with optional terms to research, as mentioned. Cartwheeling is primarily a tool for using an index. Being a good index researcher is the key to being a great legal researcher. But this skill is also very helpful in developing search queries for online legal research.

Lecture Notes . . .

Index and Search Query Research Rely on Word Association
Since the Unified Theory of Research begins with Index, the skill of index research is at the heart of legal research. And the skills related to index research will translate to using Search Queries online.

Basically, cartwheeling is a word association technique. Again, it seems obvious, but researchers must consciously engage in the cartwheeling process to increase the chances of finding on-point (relevant) references in the index. The point is that the researcher must be flexible enough to try to think like the editor of the index. Try to figure out where she or he would have placed the sought after material.

The good researcher does not stop researching if the sought after material is not found in the first or second place s/he looks. Be thorough and imaginative.

Exercises

Cartwheeling