West (and Westlaw) vs. Lexis Headnotes (Human vs. Machine)

Lawyers and other legal researchers rely on the West Key Number system and the Lexis equivalent headnote system to find relevant case law.

If you want to know how these indexing systems work “behind the scenes,” here’s an article for you:

“The Case for Curation: The Relevance of Digest and Citator Results in Westlaw and Lexis,” by Susan Nevelow Mart and Jeffrey Luftig.

(You can link to a free SSRN copy of the article from that Legal Research Plus blogpost.)