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State Government Relations
The Long and Short of Full-Text Searching
Very late one afternoon, I received a call from a concerned client.
A newspaper reporter had just appeared unexpectedly in the store
of a competitor and demanded a statement about pending adverse legislation
in Michigan. Such appearances by reporters are never fun, but this
problem was compounded by the fact that we knew of no such bill.
That meant one of two things -- either the bill didn’t exist
or, we missed it.
Triage commenced immediately. Our staff contacts in Lansing were
gone for the day, so we had to rely on what was in print. So, one
legislative team Manager, two Legislative Associates and I got out
every piece of Michigan information we had and began reading and
reading.
After we read everything we had and found no adverse bill, we turned
to the full-text legislative search engine for Michigan. Not surprisingly,
full-text searching provides a lot of information. It catches key
words and phrases in existing statutory language included by reference,
new language, stricken language and even language drawn from separate
sentences if it happens to appear in the right sequence. Full-text
searching produces a lot of volume but it does not guarantee relevancy.
Our narrow search netted about 12 bills. One was a previously known
bill and not the one we were looking for. And, even though a quick
review of the others suggested that they were not relevant, we had
to scour each page to be sure that some sneaky amendment did not
lurk within. It didn’t.
We spent many hours hunting for that "bad" bill before
the phone rang again. It was our client. He had just learned that
the reporter was talking about a federal bill. The federal bill
was the subject of a recent article in a Michigan newspaper and
that article is what prompted the reporter’s visit to the store.
There was no Michigan legislation.
Many hours were spent in anxious research, but looking on the bright
side, we hadn’t missed a bill and our client was not in danger
in Lansing. And, we learned a lot more about the "value"
of full-text legislative searching.
- Connie Campanella
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