Casemaker Tips and Tricks for May

Each month we will be bringing you a few tips and tricks for making your research with Casemaker that much more efficient.  For more Casemaker tips and tricks follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and via the Casemaker blog.

 

Go To Subsection

When viewing a lengthy statute, rule or regulation it can be cumbersome to locate the particular subsection you would like to examine. The Go To Subsection menu is right there to help. Locate and load the statute you wish to view and use the Go To drop-down menu located above the statute in the light grey bar. You can select the subsection you want and Casemaker will jump right to the particular subsection you are seeking.

 

Tracking Client Research

Need to keep track of time spent doing online research for a client?  Utilizing the Client and Session Summary features of Casemaker can help.  Simply create a Client and select that client each time you begin to conduct research for them.  Once you have finished, click the Sign Out link to sign out of Casemaker and view the Session Summary.  The Session Summary contains the date, time and client for each search, which can be used to keep track of billable hours for the client.  Please remember to print this information as it cannot be retrieved after closing the Session Summary.

 

Search Operators in Casemaker

Casemaker has a number of search functions that allow you to create complex searches to locate the information you are looking for. Let’s have a quick review of them!

AND searching – Example: Contract Binding – To perform the AND search, simply leave a space. Casemaker sees the space as the AND operator. Our example will give us documents that have the word contract as well as the word binding.

OR searching – Example: alimony OR support – Using OR as the operator will find documents that use either word in the query. In our example, this query will pull up documents mentioning either alimony or support anywhere in them.

NOT searching – Example: property NOT commercial – Using the NOT operator will tell the system to find the documents that mention the first term but do not mention the second. In our example, the query will pull up documents that refer to property but do not mention the term commercial

Grouping searching – Example: (alimony OR support) AND divorce  – This would be the one case where you should use the word AND in Casemaker. Using the parentheses tells the system we want to group these queries. In this example, the system will return documents that mention alimony or support but also mention divorce.

Phrase searching – Example: “right of way”  – This search type tells the system to treat everything in the quotations as if it were one search term. In our example, this means it will only pull cases that mention right of way but not cases that mention the words right, of and way by themselves.

Thesaurus searching – Example: ~parole – The thesaurus search not only locates your search term but also words with the same meaning. In our example query, the search will pull up documents that mention the word parole as well documents that mention any synonyms of the word parole.

Suffix searching – Example: run* – This search will pull up documents that mention terms that begin with the letters prior to the asterisk. In our example, the query will find documents that mention not only run but also any words that start with run such as runner, runs, running and so on.

Proximity searching – Example: tax w/10 property – This search will pull up documents that mention your first term within the number of words you specify of the other term. In our example, this will bring us documents where tax is mentioned within ten words of the term property.

 

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).

 

Make a Note of it!

You can add notes to any document you find in Casemaker. The note is unique to your account and cannot be seen by anyone else. When you are viewing a document you can add a note by clicking the “Notes” drop-down in the light gray bar and then selecting “Add Note.” A new window will appear and you can type in what you wish. Once you are done typing click save. The note is the stored at the top of the document. You can use the same notes menu to determine if notes or visible or hidden. Clicking the pencil icon on the note will allow you to edit the note and to delete it permanently click the “x” icon.

 

The Graph Icon

After performing a search you will notice to the far right of each of the results is a graph icon. Clicking this icon will plot, on a line graph, the number of times the case has been cited over the years. Hovering over the dots provided will tell you how many times it was cited in that year specifically, and clicking on the dot will provide you with a listing of clickable links to those cases from that year.

 

Cited Cases

Cited Cases allows you to see the cases that were cited within a case. To use this feature, simply pull up a case by searching or browsing. While reading the case, you can click on the tab at the top of the case labeled

 

Do More with Casemaker Pro (FREE for CBA members)

Casemaker Pro is a suite of tools to help make your job easier. You can receive regular summaries of appellate decisions in your preferred practice area and jurisdiction with Casemaker Digest. Casecheck+ works seamlessly in the Casemaker system to tell you instantly if a case has been treated negatively by subsequent cases with a red thumbs-down icon. You can click on the case in question to see what type of negative treatment occurred and you will find a direct link to the case which treated it negatively. Casemaker Pro also provides you with Citecheck, a tool which analyzes any searchable brief you upload and provides you with a report on any negatively treated citations. You can find out more about Casemaker Pro by clicking on the Features tab in Casemaker.