Help lawyers jump-start litigation research with trial court orders

Motion practice can be the most time-intensive aspect of a litigation practice. State trial court orders can help give lawyers a research edge, particularly on issues of first impression with little established case law. These documents can also help lawyers glean insight on judges, witnesses and opposing counsel.

Understand the full scope of litigation history: Lawyers can review written opinions for emerging issues at the trial level, as well as the chain of litigation leading up to appellate cases through history connections in Shepard’s® Citations Service.

Gain judicial insights: Researchers can uncover how judges are likely to treat a particular case strategy based on how they have ruled on issues in similar cases. It’s easy to view orders by judge and link to full profiles to examine trends over time.

Make more informed decisions: Lawyers can evaluate whether to accept a case, how to handle it and how to manage a client’s expectations with orders from similar litigation that provide a more realistic evaluation of a case’s merits.

Navigate a growing collection with ease

The LexisNexis® trial court orders collection includes 79 different court sources representing millions of orders across state lower, superior, district, circuit and specialized courts. New courts are being added each year.

A few notes on the collection:

• LexisNexis now houses more than 2 million state trial court orders on the Lexis Advance® service and has made these documents, as well as the court filings that accompany them, a top priority for expansion
• Because legal professionals usually are seeking recent trial court orders, in most states, the LexisNexis collection includes documents from 2000 forward
• In many states, LexisNexis has a more extensive collection of state trial court orders than Westlaw®, plus more state trial court orders overall*

Accessing trial court orders

It’s easy to find trial orders when you search on the Lexis Advance service. Trial orders are included in results from a broad search or general state case-law search. It’s also easy to exclude them, if desired, using Lexis Advance pre- and post-search filters. Here’s one easy way to access this content.

1. On the Lexis Advance home page, go to the Explore Content pod and select the Content Type tab.

2. Click the Cases link and then select All Trial Courts Orders.

3. Search All Trial Courts Orders sources using the Red Search Box, or select the state(s) you would like to search first.

4. You can also drill directly into a single source and use form-based searching, which can include segments (document parts) to help you find specific types of results quickly.

5. Additionally, you can search for a case and then Shepardize® to view the appellate history chain.

6. Select History Map to view how other cases have cited to your case and how the decision falls in that litigation matter.

About This Document: linking to related court materials

Many court documents and full-text cases on the Lexis Advance service provide quick links to related court materials via the About This Document box. You can easily navigate back and forth between most types of court materials.

More information

For more information, call 800-543-6862 or contact your LexisNexis representative.

*Comparison data based on information available as of October 2017. 

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