Westlaw's Drafting Assistant

Don't miss that your Westlaw subscription may include Drafting Assistant. With Thomson Reuters's Drafting Assistant you can either upload a Word document here: https://drafting.westlaw.com/Site#/upload

. . . or install an add-in for MS Word which is available here: http://info.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/software/westlaw-drafting-assistant/default.aspx .

The add-in should appear under a new tab named 'Thomson Reuters' in your Ribbon menu. Click on the 'Drafting Assistant' button and a panel will open where you click on an option to 'WestCheck'. This feature will let you extract a full list of citations from a brief, and then jump to the full text of each cited decision or statute.

From the list of extracted cites you will be able to jump to each instance of the citation in the brief, including short form versions.

A full report can be generated in PDF format which includes each case.

Bloomberg's Brief Analyzer

Don't miss that your Bloomberg Law account includes a Brief Analyzer. You can upload a text searchable PDF of a brief to the Analyzer and it will assist you with the following tasks:

1. Review the cases and statutes cited in the brief.

You'll be able to download the cited cases with less trouble than listing the cases one by one in Lexis Get & Print.

2. Browse through the brief by clicking on sections of the table of contents displayed on the left of the screen.

3. Bloomberg will suggest content to add for the arguments made in the brief. For example, in the sample brief shown below the Analyzer suggests a cite to a case not cited in the original version of the brief and lists four reasons why it should be included.

The Analyzer will note when a suggested citation cites to the same cases as a section of your brief; when it includes similar language; and when it is from the same court.

4. Easily locate additional citations for the points made in the section by running a keyword search based on the content of that section. So, in this example we search for cases that discuss ballot counting that address the issue when a plaintiff has standing.

Searching Court Dockets on Bloomberg Law

Don't miss the enhanced docket search capabilities of Bloomberg Law. The Litigation Intelligence Center, includes a docket search tool. Try clicking on the link for 'Dockets Advanced Search'.

Select a court and enter the case number without the initials for the judge. Your firm's Bloomberg Law account will give you access to court dockets and filings not freely available online, and without the need to have a user account for a particular jurisdiction. No need to run searches on the individual district PACER sites, or use the PACER account at all.

It's possible to download multiple filings simultaneously, and run searches for keywords in filing names as well as their full text. Bloomberg Law has come up with an effective unified court docket search tool for all American courts, that also incorporates the core functions of PacerPro and Lexis Courtlink. It certainly allows search results from a full text search to be reviewed more quickly than Courtlink.

The map at https://www.bloomberglaw.com/dockets/coverage provides a good overview of what is available.

Click on any state to get a list of the courts whose filings are available.

Bloomberg will add a fee (above the standard charges assessed by PACER or individual state courts) for state court documents for which the standard charge is more than $10. There are further charges for docket tracking.