This week we talk about the various search operators Casemaker offers. We also talk about an upcoming holiday closing and your bar benefit.
Holiday closing announcement
We will be closed Friday, April 19th for the Spring Holiday. We will reopen Monday, April, 22nd at 8 am EST.
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.
Your Casemaker Benefit
Many state and county bar associations provide Casemaker to their members as a valued member benefit, saving them nearly a thousand dollars every year. If your bar provides Casemaker, it is easy to get access. Simply log in to your bar association website and look for the Casemaker link. Click it and you will automatically be logged in to Casemaker. Please note: You will need to bookmark your bar website, not Casemaker.
That is all for this week! We will back with more tips and tricks next week. Thanks again for making Casemaker a Valued Member Benefit. |
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