The gold standard of legal technology information.
Track Court Dockets and Be the First to Know of Important New Filings Plus Another Hot Product
September 9, 2019
Today's TechnoLawyer Buyer's Guide report covers a court docket research service that enables you to track your cases and identify business development opportunities across all federal courts and more than 1,200 state courts.
Track Court Dockets and Be the First to Know of Important New Filings
A cottage industry of legal newspapers once existed that achieved success primarily because of their court docket listings. Nowadays, you can search court dockets to find opportunities, track your own cases, and receive notifications about new litigation associated with key clients. The largest court docket service recently relaunched based on years of feedback from thousands of law firm customers.
Lexis Advance CourtLink in One Sentence
Lexis Advance CourtLink is an online court docket tool redesigned to make it easier to run searches, track cases of interest, and receive alerts based on your criteria.
The Killer Feature
CourtLink now resides on the Lexis Advance platform, bringing with it all federal court dockets going back several decades as well as more than 1,200 state courts. Each week, CourtLink adds more than 100,000 new documents from these courts.
Thanks to this modernization, you can sign into CourtLink using your Lexis Advance ID. When researching dockets, you'll find hyperlinked cross references to related materials in Lexis Advance as well as in other services on the Lexis Advance platform such as Lex Machina.
Most important is the new notification system. CourtLink Tracks notify you about new docket filings on cases you're tracking, and CourtLink Alerts notify you about new lawsuits and other litigation activity based on your saved searches. Both types of notifications offer similar settings. Choose how often you want to check for new material (hourly, daily, etc.) and whether to receive an email message. You can enter the email addresses of colleagues and clients to share the notifications you create. Email notifications can attach new documents from the corresponding dockets in your choice of PDF or Word format.
The Alerts page in CourtLink lists the dockets you're tracking and the searches you've saved, and lets you know the number of new items since your last visit. You can filter these notifications by court, type of proceeding, client, recipients, etc. and also search within them by keyword. When you view a tracked docket, the Changes Only button saves you time by listing only new documents you haven't seen before.
CourtLink now features the same design language as Lexis Advance.
Other Notable Features
CourtLink's home page enables you to run keyword searches for court documents and/or dockets across all jurisdictions or those you specify. If you just want to find a specific case, you can enter its docket number. Other options include searching by litigant, attorney, law firm, or judge. CourtLink will notify you if a court's docket doesn't support a particular criteria.
The search results highlight your search terms and enable you to filter by litigation area, case type, case status, date filed, and more. Click a docket of interest to view its documents and their availability. You can arrange for a courthouse retrieval if necessary.
"Integration of CourtLink into the Lexis Advance product ecosystem provides our clients with a better user experience by making the product more intuitive, more streamlined, and easier to learn," says Jeff Pfeifer, Chief Product Officer, North American Research Solutions, LexisNexis. "CourtLink has long been the market leader in court docket coverage and this re-invention of the product further improves a lawyer's ability to track and monitor critical litigation events."
What Else Should You Know?
CourtLink integrates with Lex Machina, enabling you to view analytics on the judge, lawyers, and law firms associated with a docket. If you have a Lex Machina subscription, you can drill down for charts to better understand a judge or law firm. Explore Lexis Advance CourtLink and bookmark the website.
Meet Neil J. Squillante
Neil J. Squillante is the founder and publisher of TechnoLawyer, an award-winning network of free email newsletters for lawyers and law office administrators. Many consider TechnoLawyer newsletters the only ones they need. A Fastcase 50 award winner, Neil has a long track record of inventing successful advertising and publishing technologies and related best practices. Previously, Neil practiced commercial litigation at Am Law 100 firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He received his J.D. from UCLA School of Law and his B.A. from Duke University. At UCLA, Neil served as a Managing Editor of UCLA Law Review.
