Search order and the source ladder

Most bad research fails in one of two ways. The search looked in the wrong court system, or it reported "nothing found" when it had only looked in one place. A set order for searching prevents both. It also saves money, because you stop wandering.

Step 1: Find what law governs

Before you search for any case, find out which law applies. Do not guess.

Look in these places.

• The arbitration agreement or contract, for a choice-of-law clause.
• The scheduling order or first procedural order, which often says which law applies.
• The arbitration rules named in your agreement.
• The claim itself. A federal leave or disability claim brings federal law. Many states also have their own laws on leave, disability, discrimination, and retaliation, and some cities do too.

Write what you find in your CLAUDE.md, in a short research scope section. List the courts to search, in priority order. Every research task you give the tool should follow that list.

One more point. Procedure may follow different rules than the substance. Arbitration usually follows the arbitration rules, and court rules are often only persuasive. Record which is which, so the tool does not treat a court rule as binding when it is not.

Step 2: Search state courts first when state law governs

When state law governs your claim, search state authority first, in this order.

1. The state's highest court.
2. Each intermediate appellate court.
3. The state procedure code and court rules.

Then search the federal circuit that covers your state, and the federal trial courts in your state.

Name the matching state rule beside any federal rule. If you search a federal civil procedure rule, also search the state counterpart.

Why the order matters. Many AI search runs lean toward federal cases, because they are easier to find online. A federal-only search on a state-law question is incomplete. If it reports "no case found," that report is not a real gap. A single state appellate decision can control your question, and a federal-only search will miss it.

The governing law is often already written in your order or contract. The failure is a prompt that does not follow it. Make sure yours does.

Step 3: Split the effort

Give each court system its own share of the search budget. A rough split of half state and half federal is a fine start when state law governs. If state law governs entirely, lean more toward state.

Put the split in your prompt in plain numbers. For example, "up to 15 searches on state courts, up to 10 on federal courts." Chapter 8 has a prompt that does this. Without a split, the federal results fill the budget first and the state searches never run.

Before you accept any "no case found" result, ask one question. Did the prompt ever point at state courts?

Step 4: Try multiple framings

One phrase will miss cases that use different words for the same relief. Before you search, write down every way the issue could be put.

• The mover's wording and the winner's wording.
• Old terms and new terms.
• The words a court uses to grant relief and the words it uses to deny it.
• The same question from the other side's posture. For example, a case about a request that was denied may be the best case for your request to be granted.

Search each phrasing. A search for one phrase can miss a case that uses a different verb for the same thing.

Step 5: Search the rule number first

If a rule or statute controls your question, search its number before you search keywords. Cases often cite the rule by number and say little else. A search for the number finds the cases that apply it, in the words courts actually use.

After you find those cases, learn the vocabulary they use. Then run your keyword searches again with that vocabulary.

Step 6: Forward-citation and recency sweeps

Finding one good case is the start. Two sweeps come next.

Forward-citation sweep

Take each key case you found. List the cases that cite it, newest first. This shows you three things.

• How courts now read the case.
• Whether the case has been limited, criticized, or overruled.
• Newer cases on the same point that you have not found yet.

CourtListener lets you see cases that cite a given opinion. It is a free case-law database with a large archive of older reporters.

Recency sweep

Free databases lag on recent unreported decisions. Go to the official court site and look at the newest decisions directly. Do this for each court on your list. Coverage differs by state, so write down what works for yours.

Step 7: The source ladder

You found a case name. Now you need the full text. If the first database does not have it, work down this list.

1. Start with CourtListener. It has a large archive of older official reporters. For older cases from that archive, the text often carries the official page breaks, which helps you verify exact pincites. Newer opinions there are often the court's slip text with no reporter page numbers.
2. Try the state's official reports site. Some court sites block automated page fetchers. A command-line download with a browser-style header can get through, and you can ask the tool to try that.
3. Try Google Scholar case search.
4. Try free full-text mirrors such as Justia or Leagle. Find the exact address by searching first. Do not guess the address.
5. Try the database's API directly. Search by party name with no date filter. If the main text field is empty, read the alternate text field.
6. Use secondary sources only to confirm that a cite is real. Law firm alerts and bar journals are examples. They are never your verification. A cite you saw only in another opinion or an article is "real but not read," and you do not mark it verified.
7. If you still cannot read it, mark it "unverified on free sources." Name the exact point you needed it for.

Each time, have the tool say which source it actually used. Write the working recipe down once, so the tool does not rediscover blocked paths in every session.

A note on tools. WebFetch returns the answer to your prompt, not the raw page. So "not mentioned" may just mean the question did not ask about it. To check a quote, ask the tool to return the exact passage, or save the full text to a file and search the file.

Date filters can hide old cases

A date filter added "just to narrow the results" can quietly hide older cases. Real cases then look missing. The rule is to search by case name first, with no date filter. Add filters only after you have the name.

Coverage limits matter too. Official state reporter sites often begin in the early 2000s. Older cases live in the archive database or the mirrors. The Harvard archive inside CourtListener appears to run through about 2020, and recent unreported decisions are thin in free databases. That is why the recency sweep exists.

"Not found" discipline

Do not let the tool write "no case exists." Absence from a free database is evidence, not proof. Ask for this wording.

• "Not found using these framings and these sweeps."
• A list of what was not searched.
• A confidence level.

When free sources cannot confirm a point, the tool should write "unverified on free sources." It should name the exact point, and give a confidence level. A report like that tells you where to look next. A flat "nothing exists" shuts the door on a case that might help.

The search order on one page

1. Find what law governs.
2. Search state authority first when state law governs, then federal.
3. Split the budget in numbers.
4. Try every framing.
5. Search the rule number.
6. Sweep forward citations and recent decisions.
7. Work down the source ladder for full text.
8. Report what was not searched.

Next: Chapter 6 shows how to verify what you found before it reaches a draft. Chapter 7 then explains how to use more than one model.

Sources

• CourtListener
• Claude Code tools reference (WebFetch and WebSearch)
• Claude Code subagents