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In this lesson, you will learn how to find appellate opinions, the use of keywords in your research, and the operators that help narrow your search results.
Finding Appellate Opinions (Case Law)
- Searching for cases
- Gather your keywords
- Connectors
- Advanced search symbols
- A search result on Courtroom5
Transcript
You can find case law by searching jurisdiction, case name, case citation, or other criteria, like date.
To start, gather your keywords. You can get these from the complaint, encyclopedias, and dictionaries, or even guess them based on what you already know. If you know the statute, use it as a keyword, you can always update later.
Keywords for a negligence case might be terms like \”duty\” and \”responsibility\”. In a trespassing case, they might be \”adverse possession\” and \”property rights\”. In landlord-tenant, \”tenant\’s rights\” and \”landlord\’s rights\”. You can use synonyms at any time. In a breach of contract case about poor workmanship, for instance, search the phrase \”shoddy work\”. \”Breach of contract\” is also a good choice.
Case databases allow you to combine search terms using operators or connectors like \”and\”, \”or\”, and \”not\” between keywords.
\”And\” requires all terms to appear in a case.
\”Or\” requires only that either term appears in a case.
\”Not\” excludes cases when one term is needed, but the other is not. The case database at Courtroom5 puts an invisible \”and\” between each search term.
You can also use symbols to conduct an advanced search on Courtroom5.
This is a search at Courtroom5 for the terms medical and negligence.