Systems, methods, interfaces and software for extending search results beyond initial query-defined boundaries

A method of responding to a query from a user, comprising:

• searching a first database comprising court legal opinions based on the query to identify a first set of one or more documents;
• automatically identifying a second set of one or more documents in a second legal database comprising legal resources other than court legal opinions by inputting at least a portion of the query in a text classification engine which classifies text based on similarity to documents in the second database;
• automatically determining whether to include or exclude a candidate document in the second set of one or more documents, the determining comprising evaluating each score in a set of composite scores for the candidate document against a set of decision criteria, wherein the candidate document is included in the second set of one or more documents if the candidate document meets a similarity threshold associated with the second set of one or more documents;
• and
• outputting at least a portion of each of the first and the second set of documents to an access device associated with the user;
• wherein
• the searching a first database comprises using a search engine configured to search the first database as a function of the query;
• the inputting at least a portion of the query in a text classification engine comprises using a second search engine configured to search a second database as a function of one or more of the query and a result from the first search engine;
• and
• the first search engine comprises a term-frequency-inverse-document-frequency search engine and the second search engine comprises a composite vector-based classifier.

A method of responding to a query from a user, comprising:

• searching a first database comprising court legal opinions based on the query to identify a first set of one or more documents;
• automatically identifying a second set of one or more documents in a second legal database comprising legal resources other than court legal opinions by inputting a keyword associated with the first set of documents in a text classification engine which classifies text based on similarity to documents in the second database;
• automatically determining whether to include or exclude a candidate document in the second set of one or more documents, the determining comprising evaluating each score in a set of composite scores for the candidate document against a set of decision criteria, wherein the candidate document is included in the second set of one or more documents if the candidate document meets a similarity threshold associated with the second set of one or more documents;
• and
• outputting at least a portion of each of the first and the second set of documents to an access device associated with the user.

A method of responding to a query from a user, comprising:

• using a processor for:
• searching a first database comprising court legal opinions based on the query;
• automatically searching a second legal database comprising legal resources other than court legal opinions using a keyword associated with text extracted from a result of the search of the first database;
• initiating a transmission of a response to the user based on one or more of the searching a first database or the searching a second database;
• and
• automatically determining whether to include or exclude a candidate document in the response based on the searching of the second database, the determining comprising evaluating each score in a set of composite scores for the candidate document against a set of decision criteria, wherein the candidate document is included in the response based on the searching of the second database if the candidate document meets a similarity threshold associated with the response based on the searching of the second database.

A method comprising:

• presenting a search interface to a user for searching a first database comprising court legal opinions;
• receiving a query from the user;
• identifying a set of search results as a function of the query;
• identifying a set of secondary search results from a second legal database comprising legal resources other than court legal opinions as a function of a keyword associated with text from the search results from the query;
• automatically determining whether to include or exclude a candidate document in the set of secondary search results, the determining comprising evaluating each score in a set of composite scores for the candidate document against a set of decision criteria, wherein the candidate document is included in the set of secondary search results if the candidate document meets a similarity threshold associated with the set of secondary search results;
• and
• displaying the search results and the secondary search results.

A computer-readable medium comprising instructions that when executed by a processor execute a process comprising:

• searching a first database comprising court legal opinions based on a query to identify a first set of one or more documents;
• automatically identifying a second set of one or more documents in a second legal database comprising legal resources other than court legal opinions by inputting a keyword associated with the first set of documents in a text classification engine which classifies text based on similarity to documents in the second database;
• automatically determining whether to include or exclude a candidate document in the second set of one or more documents, the determining comprising evaluating each score in a set of composite scores for the candidate document against a set of decision criteria, wherein the candidate document is included in the second set of one or more documents if the candidate document meets a similarity threshold associated with the second set of one or more documents;
• and
• outputting at least a portion of each of the first and the second set of documents to an access device associated with a user.

A computer-readable medium comprising instructions that when executed by a processor execute a process comprising:

• searching a first database comprising court legal opinions based on a query;
• and
• automatically searching a second legal database comprising legal resources other than court legal opinions using a keyword associated with text extracted from a result of searching the first database;
• and
• automatically determining whether to include or exclude a candidate document in a response based on the searching of the second database, the determining comprising evaluating each score in a set of composite scores for the candidate document against a set of decision criteria, wherein the candidate document is included in the response based on the searching of the second database if the candidate document meets a similarity threshold associated with the response based on the searching of the second database.

A computer-readable medium comprising instructions that when executed by a processor execute a process comprising:

• presenting a search interface to a user for searching a first database comprising court legal opinions;
• receiving a query from the user;
• identifying a set of search results from a second legal database comprising legal resources other than court legal opinions as a function of the query;
• identifying a set of secondary search results as a function of a keyword associated with text from the search results from the query;
• automatically determining whether to include or exclude a candidate document in the set of secondary search results, the determining comprising evaluating each score in a set of composite scores for the candidate document against a set of decision criteria, wherein the candidate document is included in the set of secondary search results if the candidate document meets a similarity threshold associated with the set of secondary search results;
• and
• displaying the search results and the secondary search results.