Each month we will be bringing you a few tips and tricks for making your research with Casemaker that much more efficient. This month — emailing or downloading documents, making notes, sorting results, and more. For more Casemaker tips and tricks follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and via the Casemaker blog.
Emailing Documents
Have you have been viewing a document in Casemaker and wanted to just email it to your client or colleague? Casemaker allows for just that! To email a document to your client, your colleague, or even yourself – you first need to click on the envelope icon located in the upper right-hand corner of the document in the dark gray bar. A pop-up window will appear giving you a number of options to choose from. You can select the document format. You can choose to send a PDF, Word or WordPerfect document as well as chose dual or single column format. You can also decide to include your notes or any highlighted terms. If you would like, you can attach the list of citing references and any negative treatment found as well. Make your choices then enter the recipient’s email address (or addresses), a subject for the email, and a short message if you wish. Then hit the blue email button and Casemaker will email the document for you. It is that simple!
Downloading Documents
Of course, you can access Casemaker from anywhere in the world with internet access – but sometimes you may find you need to download a copy of a case. Casemaker allows you to do just that.
While reading a case in Casemaker you will notice a set of icons on the far right in the gray toolbar area – a printer, an envelope, a folder and a floppy disk. Click on the floppy disk icon. After you click on the floppy disk icon you will see a pop up offering you a number of options. You can select various formats for the document such as Word or PDF and how many columns per a page. You can also attach any notes you have made and including treatment, citing references and highlighting. Once you have selected the options you want – just click download. The document will save on your computer or laptop. Now you can access the case – no internet required.
Sorting Results
Did you know you can sort your results by more than just relevance? Once you have completed a search, click on the View All link to see all the results in the document category you prefer. Once you do this you can sort these results by selecting a sort method from the dark gray bar above the results list. You can sort by Relevance, Most Cited, Date Decided or State (Ascending or Descending).
Adding Notes
The Note function is located in the light gray toolbar when you are viewing a document. You can add a note to any document within Casemaker. This note is specific to your account and cannot be seen by any other accounts, and you can add as many notes to as many documents as like. To add a note, click the Notes drop-down box, and select Add Note. A new window will appear where you can type in your note. Click SAVE when you are finished. The note is stored at the top of the document. Using the Notes menu, you can choose whether the notes are hidden or on display. To edit a note you’ve created, just click the pencil icon and make the necessary changes. To delete a note, click the corresponding ‘X’
Phrase Searching
So you are looking for Ohio cases which involve improper driving. “Well,” you say to yourself, “I will just type in the words improper driving and hit search.” Casemaker then gives you quite the impressively long list of results. However, when you pull up a few cases you notice that they do not all seem to be on point. In fact, they just seem to be cases with the word improper somewhere in them and the word driving somewhere else in them. That is too broad. This just won’t do!
So how do you fix this? Try using the phrase search.
To use the phrase search put the phrase or words you are looking for in quotation marks. This tells Casemaker to treat all the words in the quotes as one single search term. This will only pull documents where the words within the quotations are adjacent and in the same order.
So the next time you enter “improper driving” in the search bar – and you get a much better list of results.
Selecting Jurisdictions
Need to search all the documents in a state? How about all the documents in more than one state? You can select a jurisdiction or any combination of jurisdictions to search by clicking the Jurisdiction menu. This is located in the box located between the search box and the blue search button. There is a blue downward pointing arrow in the right side of this box. Clicking on this arrow will pull up the pop-up menu and from here you can check as many or as few boxes as you need. Special boxes are located at the top of each column. Related Federal will pull documents from any states you selected as well as the related Federal District and Circuit courts. All States will pull documents from all the state libraries. All Federal will pull documents from all Federal libraries.
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