WESTLAW NEXT Tip of the Week: Searching in Trial Court Documents using Advanced Search
April 1, 2013
Trial Court Documents are a great place to start your research because you can see how other attorneys in your jurisdiction framed an argument and the law they relied on. This can save you hours of research and time.
Advanced Search templates are unique to the content you are searching in. You can always access a general advanced search template by clicking on the advanced link to the right of the Search button.
To access an advanced search template unique to the content you are searching in, first navigate to that content and then click on the advanced link. From the WestlawNext® home page click on Trial Court Documents under the All Content tab.
This brings you to the Trial Court Documents page. From here you can search all of the content listed on the page or select more narrow content like a jurisdiction or topic. Click on advanced to the right of the Search button.
Using the Trial Court Documents advanced search template is especially helpful because you can simply check the box for the type of document you are looking for. Here select Motion in Limine. You can also use the document field boxes like Court or Text. Enter terms you are confident would be in the text of a document that would be relevant to your issue. For example, if you are looking for a motion in limine for a product liability case enter “product liability” in the Text field box.
Using Trial Court Documents will make you more efficient by giving you a jump start on your research and a solid starting place to begin writing.