---
title: Firm Search Now Handles Punctuation and Spacing Variations
description: Students find the right firm whether they type the apostrophe, the space, or neither.
image: https://insights.joinflo.com/hubfs/firm-search-banner.png
---
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# Firm Search Now Handles Punctuation and Spacing Variations
[Katherine Allen October 9, 2026](https://insights.joinflo.com/product-updates/author/katherine-allen)
- [Product Updates](https://insights.joinflo.com/product-updates/tag/product-updates)
- 1 mins
Flo's product team iterates constantly, and some of the most satisfying improvements are the ones that quietly remove a small but recurring point of confusion. This update to firm search on Flo Forward is exactly that kind of change.
## **The challenge**
Career services teams support students who are actively searching for firms on Flo Forward, and a recurring issue came up around firms whose names include apostrophes or internal spacing. A student searching for a firm like O'Melveny might type it without the apostrophe, or with a space instead, and get no results. The search was matching on exact character strings, which meant that punctuation variations sent students down a dead end.
## **What we launched**
Firm search on Flo Forward now ignores apostrophes and spaces when matching against firm names. A student can type **OMelveny**, **O Melveny**, or **O'Melveny** and will find O'Melveny in results. This applies across Browse Firms, the job board, and the event board, and it works for every firm whose name includes punctuation, not just a specific set.
## **Why it matters**
Law students often search for firms by name while moving quickly. When a search returns nothing because of a missing punctuation mark, the natural assumption is that the firm isn't in the system. This change means the search works the way a student expects it to, regardless of how precisely they type the firm's name.
For career services teams, it removes a category of question they occasionally fielded from students who couldn't find a firm they knew was there.
It's a small change with a straightforward effect, and it's the kind of thing we're always looking to catch. If there are other search or navigation quirks on Flo Forward that you or your students run into, tell us. We keep a close eye on what you surface.
Want to see our latest updates in action? [Book a demo](https://www.joinflo.com/request-demo) and we'll walk you through them.
### Katherine Allen
Katherine Allen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flo. Katherine is passionate about building solutions for the legal industry in collaboration with Flo’s clients, proudly partnering with 200+ law firm and law school CSOs across the U.S. and serving 10,000+ law students on Flo Recruit Forward.
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- [For Search Firms](https://www.joinflo.com/solutions/search-firms)
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