Related Federal, Cases by Citation, and Finding Terms Inside Your Document – Let’s get started!
Finding Your Search Terms
You’ve done your search with your keyword or keywords and you have pulled up your first result to read the case. Now, where in the world are your search terms even mentioned? You can find them using the Search Terms arrows in the gray toolbar. Located just above the title when you are reading the case is a gray toolbar. Here you see options to return to results, arrows to move around your list of results documents, as well as the phrase Search Terms with arrows on either side. Clicking on either arrow will take you to the next search term above or below where you are in the case you are viewing
Searching for Cases with Citation
The most frequently used function of Casemaker for most users is searching by citation. From the home page, you can simply type your citation in. You do not have to worry about being too picky if you use the wrong spacing, punctuation, or capitalization; Casemaker will automatically correct that for you. You do however need to make sure you are using only the reporter citation and the proper abbreviation. Casemaker goes by the Blue Book citation guidelines if you have any questions regarding abbreviations. For example, with Kearns v. Ford Motor Co., 567 F.3d 1120 (9th Cir. 2009), all you would put in the search bar is 567 F.3d 1120. Be sure you select the correct jurisdiction, however – you will not be able to pull up a New Hampshire Superior Court case when searching in US Court of Appeals!
Sometimes a particular citation brings up more than one result, and there is a very good reason for this. The other case shares a page with the case you were searching for. For example, your case may end on page 104 and another case begins on the same page of the reporter. This means even if you are typing in a pin cite, you will still be able to locate the case you are looking for.
Related Federal
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.
At the top of the list of states in the Jurisdiction menu, you will notice a checkbox for Related Federal. This tells Casemaker to not only pull cases for the state you selected, but also for the Federal District and Circuit courts related to that state. So if you select Virginia and also select Related Federal you will get not only Virginia state level cases but also the Eastern and Western District of Virginia court cases as well as cases in the Fourth Circuit. This means you will get cases from other states in your circuit as well, in the case of our example – Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia cases would also be included. However, this would again only be cases in your circuit, not any outside of it.
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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