“Cheat Sheet” for using Casemaker to do Caselaw Searches

And Search

To find cases that have the words officer, warrantless, search and cocaine, put a space between the keywords:

Officer warrantless search cocaine

Or Search

To find cases that have homicide and the words gun or knife, put the “or” words in parentheses and separate them with a comma:

Homicide (gun,knife)

Phrase Search

If you want to find exact text in a search query, you might want to use a phrase search. To do a phrase search, put the phrase you want to exactly find in quotes:

“wrongful death” “next of kin” damages

This search will find the phrases “wrongful death” AND “next of kin” AND the word damages

Exclusion Search

If you want to find cases that do not include a specific word (or phrase), you need to put a minus sign in front of the word. Do not put a space between the minus sign and the word:

property –residential

This search will include cases with the word “property” and that do not include “residential.”

Property –residential –“assessment covenants”

This search will include cases with the word “property” and not the word “residential” or the phrase “assessment covenants.”

Thesaurus Expansion

Enables you to expand your search to cases that have words related to the keywords in your search:

DWI ~school

This search will include DWI cases that include school, institution, university, etc. The ~ (tilde) must come directly in front of the word being expanded.