The phrase "information retrieval" covers such a myriad of topics that it, is necessary to outline the problems in which we are interested. Our programming research was initiated by the needs of lawyers for high speed computer assistance in their studies. There are many different problems in this work. The body of text includes statutes, regulations, and cases on a variety of topics. Statutes were selected for the first phase of the project. These involved the use of a technical vocabulary (not to the extent of a scientific vocabulary). However, the use of words is not primarily metaphorical. In addition, lawyers have a variety of questions beyond the simple identification of a document by a search. They are sometimes interested in the use of a particular wording or phrase. Other times they are interested only in citations. Sometimes, having pursued a search and received results, they wish to probe deeper into the same question. This meant tha t there would not be just one search progrmn but an integrated family of programs that were needed. Because of the difficulties of meaning (after all, this is what lawyers are fo r -no t leafing pages in a library), neither traditional legal index methods not' some of the more modern means of linguistic coding devices were adequate. With this background, the technical assumptions on our programming research will seem more natural.