Top 10 Times to Leverage Casetext

Casetext can be a great resource at any stage of your legal research and writing process, or even just to help you stay up-to-date in the area of law that you practice. Here are the top 10 moments our clients have found Casetext and CARA, the AI-backed legal research assistant, to be most useful.

1. Opposing counsel sends you a document and you need to review the authorities they cited.

If your firm has access to CARA Notifications, just check your email! If you’re an attorney-of-record on a case in federal court, you’ll automatically receive an email whenever a document is filed in your docket. Click on the link in the email to go directly to the document’s CARA results, and then select the “Cited in” tab to see the cases they cited, along with short summaries. Click on a case to read the full text.

Or just drag-and-drop opposing counsel’s document into CARA and then click the “Cited in” tab to see the full text and summaries of the cases they cited.

To create a “smart binder” containing the full text of each case and a table of authorities, click the “print” button and select cases to download — paralegals really like this feature!

2. Opposing counsel files a document in your docket and you want to find cases to oppose their position.

To see relevant cases opposing counsel did not cite in their brief (accidentally or strategically), you can either click the link in your CARA Notifications email, or drag-and-drop opposing counsel’s brief to CARA and check out the results in the “Cases” tab.

3. You want to find more support for your position or a better case to cite.

Drag-and-drop your draft into CARA and see relevant cases you haven’t yet cited (CARA works on documents that have two or more citations). If you’re looking for authority on a specific issue, enter keywords and boolean connectors in the search bar. You can also click on one of CARA’s suggested search terms to narrow your results.

4. You want to see how other attorneys have argued your position in the past and anticipate how opposing counsel will argue theirs.

No need to reinvent the wheel. You can access related briefs filed by top attorneys in federal court in your search results, whether you’ve dragged your document into CARA or searched by keyword in Casetext. Read and download as many briefs as you like (at no additional cost).

5. You need to quickly read a case.

Just enter the case name or citation in the search bar to find a case in Casetext’s database of state and federal law (published and unpublished). Click here to see the jurisdictions covered in Casetext’s database.

6. You want to quickly understand a case.

The tools embedded in the Casetext case pages help you quickly understand what a case is about:

• Read Summaries from Subsequent Cases to see how different courts summarized the case.
• Review Key Passages to see sentences that have been quoted by other courts.
• Use the Heatmap to jump directly to the pages with the most key passages.
• Review Analyses to see what legal experts think about the relevant legal issues.
• Read Cited Cases to see other cases that have cited to the one you’re reading.

7. You’ve found a passage you’d like to quote and you need to cite to it correctly.

Highlight the text you’d like to quote and select “copy-with-cite” or “parenthetical citation.” Then paste the passage into your draft and the proper bluebook citation is added automatically.

8. You’re about to file a brief in court or send a document to a partner, and you want to make sure you didn’t miss any new cases or arguments.

CARA your brief and skim the recommended cases and analyses to ensure that you’ve included all of the important arguments for your client.

9. You’re a senior attorney and you need to quickly verify that a junior associate’s draft is correct.

Have CARA take a look to check if there are any cases that should be added. Review the summaries, key passages, and expert analyses to quickly understand what a case is about (without having to read the entire opinion). Then share the result list with the associate by sending the unique url in an email or instant message.

10. You want to update an old brief, memo, or case document with new case law or statutes.

Drag-and-drop your document into CARA. Then sort by date to see if there are any new cases you should add.