Docket Alarm can conduct natural language searches and terms and connectors searches. Searching with natural language is easy, just type what you’re looking for and we’ll find the most relevant documents.

Terms and connectors searching provides a high level of precision that can help narrow down search results. Docket Alarm supports many terms and connectors, including Boolean, proximity, stemming, wildcard, and phrase searches.

Below is a summary of Docket Alarm’s connectors:

Connector	Description	Example
AND	Find documents containing all connected terms. The word AND does not have to be capitalized.	personal AND injury
OR	Find documents containing any connected term. The word OR does not have to be capitalized.	order OR decision
NOT	Excludes documents.	personal AND NOT injury finds documents with the word “personal” and not “injury”
w/#	Find documents which have terms within a given proximity of each other.	personal w/5 injury finds documents with “personal” within five words of “injury”
!	Stemming finds all words containing the root word	electric! finds documents containing “electrical”, “electronics”, “electricity”, etc.
*	Find similar words with variations on single characters	wom*n find documents containing either “woman” or “women”
“[phrase]”	Finds an exact phrase	“personal injury”
( … )	Parenthesis may be used to group sets of terms of connectors	personal w/5 (injury OR fall) find documents with the word personal within five words of the word injury or fall
-	Hyphens search words both with and without the hyphen.	cross-reference find documents with any of the words and phrases: crossreference, cross-reference, cross reference.

Filters

Filters allow you to limit your search for keywords within particular fields, such as firms, judges, attorneys, and other.

Filter	Description	Examples with Explanation
court	Find documents in a particular court	court:(New York) finds documents in New York courts court:(Supreme Court AND NOT state) find documents in the supreme court, but not in state courts
judge party firm attorney	Find documents in a case involving a particular judge / party / firm / attorney	judge:Posner find cases involving Judge Posner party:Apple find cases involving apple firm:(“Weil Gotshal”) find cases involving Weil Gotshal attorney:(David w/3 Boies) find cases involving the attorney David Boies
from:[date] to:[date]	Date filters allow you to filter documents and cases by the date they were filed. These dates are inclusive	from:3/1/2015 Find cases no earlier than March 1, 2015 from:2014 to:2015 Find cases from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 31, 2015 from:-5days to:-1days Find cases from 5 days ago to yesterday. from:yesterday to:today Find cases from yesterday to today.
nos	Filter Federal cases by Nature of Suit Codes.	nos:patent Find all patent cases claim w/3 construction AND NOT nos:patent Find all documents that mention the word claim within three words of the word construction that are not patent cases.
documenttitle	Find documents which have a word or set of words in the document's title.	documenttitle:(scheduling order) Find all documents that have the words scheduling order in the document's title.
status	Find cases or documents with the specified status. Note that the status field is not normalized across courts, and some courts do not even provide a status.	status:(terminated or closed) Find all documents and cases with a closed or terminated status field.
type	Find cases or documents with the specified case type. Note that the type field is not normalized across courts, and some courts do not even provide a type.	type:("personal injury" and not liability) Find all documents and cases with a case type having the phrase personal injury and without the word liability.
cause division demand county	Certain courts have additional fields such as cause, division, demand, and county, and these filters can be used to narrow a search appropriately. Note that not all courts support all of these fields.	cause:employment Find all documents and cases with a "cause" containing the word employment.
event	Find cases with a particular event.	event:(type:(petition institution) outcome:denied) This advanced filter locates all denied petition institution decisions. If you would like to learn more about these advanced filters, please contact us for a free demonstration (support@docketalarm.com).

Tip: not all filters fields are globally populated across all courts, many are only populated in certain courts. Accordingly, you may want to do a some investigation to see which courts use them. To do this type of investigation, you can use the filter with empty quotes. For example, get a list of cases using the demand filter by searching for demand:"". That search lists results where the demand field exists.

Result Type Filters

You can limit the type of document returned with a few additional filters.

Search	Description
is:docket	Only search through docket sheets.
is:document	Only search through documents.
is:opinion	Only search for court opinions and documents authored by the court.
is:pleading	Only search for complaints, answers, and petitions. Also includes amended complaints and answers.
is:motion	Search for motions and briefs.
is:pacer	Only search for cases that come from PACER's database (Federal District, appellate courts, and bankruptcies). To exclude PACER cases, add NOT is:pacer.
is:bankruptcy	Limit the search to bankruptcies. To exclude bankruptcies, add NOT is:bankruptcy.
has:firm	Only search results which have law firm information associated with the case.
has:attorney	Only search results which have attorney name information associated with the case.
has:attorney_email	Only search results which have attorney email information.
has:attorney_phone	Only search results which have attorney phone information.

Special Searches

Docket Alarm handles certain specialty searches in an intelligent manner:

Search	Description	Examples with Explanation
Synonyms and Abbreviations	Docket Alarm automatically searches common synonyms and abbreviations. Contact us for a full list of synonyms.	lawyer finds documents mentioning either lawyer or attorney. SEC finds documents mentioning either SEC or Securities and Exchange Commission. Most common agencies covered. NY finds documents mentioning either NY or New York. All state abbreviations work as expected except for Oregon (“OR”) and Indiana (“IN”).
Statutes	When searching for acronyms, Docket Alarm will search for the word with and without periods.	35 U.S.C. 102 finds documents mentioning both “U.S.C.” and “USC”.
Money Amounts	When searching for a range of money amounts, Docket Alarm searches for all amounts within the range.	$100k-20M find documents with a dollar amount between $100,000 and $20 million. $1000-$20000 find documents with a dollar amounts between $1000 and $20,000.
Patent Numbers	When searching for patent numbers (or any long number), Docket Alarm will automatically insert or remove commas as necessary.	6,665,003 find documents mentioning “6,665,003” and “6665003” 6665003 find documents mentioning “6,665,003” and “6665003”
Docket Numbers	Docket Alarm tries to search for docket numbers in various ways to increase the likelihood that they will match.	1:12-cv-123 find documents mentioning “12-cv-123”,”12-cv-00123”, “12cv123”, among others.

Range and Numerical Filters

A few special filters allow you to specify a range of numbers. A range is specified using brackets "[" and "]" and specifying numbers in between. For example, [1, 5] means all numbers from 1 to 5. Values can also be left out, so [3,] means number 3 and greater. These range searches can be used to search for specific types of cases:

Filter	Description	Examples with Explanation
num_party	Search for cases with a specified number of parties.	num_party:[10,100] find cases involving 10 to 100 parties.
num_firm	Search for cases with a specified number of law firms involved.	num_firm:[,2] find cases involving at most 2 law firms.
num_attorney	Search for cases with a specified number of attorneys involved.	num_firm:[2,40] find cases involving 2 to 40 attorneys.
num_days	Search for cases that have been open for the specified number of days.	num_days:[30,365] find cases that have been open at least 30 days but no more than 365 days.
num_pages	Search for documents with a specified number of pages.	num_pages:[100,1000] find documents with 100 to 1000 pages.

Advanced Date Searches

Special date filters can support a number of unique searches, including when a docket was first added into Docket Alarm, when it was last updated, and the last filing on a docket. Each date filter requires a to or from subfilter, which in turn require either an absolute date (e.g., 3/15/2015 or a date delta relative to today (e.g., -5days, which means "from 5 days ago"). See the examples below for more information.

Filter	Description	Examples with Explanation
date_last_filing	Search for case dockets based on the most recently filed item in the docket sheet.	date_last_filing:(from:3/15/2015 to:12/1/2016) find where the most recently filed item on the docket sheet ws between March 15, 2015 and December 1, 2016 (inclusive).
date_created	Search for cases based on the time they were added to Docket Alarm's database.	date_created:(from:-3days) find cases that were created in the past three days.
date_get	Search for cases based on time they were last updated on Docket Alarm.	date_get:(from:-60days to:-30days) find cases that were last updated on Docket Alarm from 60 days ago to 30 days ago.

Party Sub Filters

The party filter listed above is more sophisticated than it lets on. Using sub-filters, you can search for parties in combination with their party type, law firm, attorney name and other fields.

Using the hierarchy of filters below, you can search for parties when they are acting only as plaintiff or any other specific type, as well as when they are being represented by a particular firm or attorney.

• party
  • name
  • type
  • firm
    • name
    • attorney

Examples

Example	Explanation
party:(name:google type:plaintiff)	Find cases where google is acting as the plaintiff.
party:(name:google firm:(name:(dla piper)))	Find cases where google is represented by the firm DLA Piper.
party:(name:google firm:(attorney:"john smith") type:defendant)	Find cases where google is acting as defendant and represented by the attorney John Smith.

Gender Diversity and Contact Information

The partyfield has additional undocumented functionality to assist in finding gender diverse cases (we count up the male and female attorneys in a case), as well as finding cases where we have the contact information for the attorneys. If you would like to use these advanced sub-filters, please contact us.

Query Combinations

You can combine multiple queries by using the parenthesis to separate each sub-query. For example, a search for “notice w/10 (decision OR order)” would return documents where the word “notice” is used within 10 words of either the word “decision” or the word “order”.