This week we discuss Citing References, downloading documents, and Casemaker’s search operators. Let’s get started!
Citing References
While it is great to get that green thumbs up or red thumbs down from Casecheck+ to tell you if a case has been treated negatively in subsequent cases – it is also nice just to have a list of what actually cited the case you are reading. This is where Citing References comes in. When you are reading a case, you will notice in the bar above the case a link for Citing References. This will provide you with a list of cases that have cited this case. Links to these cases are included and will take you directly to the portion where the case you are researching is involved. When you pull up the list of Citing References you can narrow the results by keyword or jurisdiction using the menu on the left as well.
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.
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.
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.