Casemaker is a lower-cost legal research tool with a giant database of state and federal case law and statutes, and a citator tool that rivals its counterparts at Westlaw and LexisNexis.
Casemaker Highlights
Daily updates. Casemaker publishes new caselaw daily, and attorney editors continuously update state and federal laws, ensuring that you find the most up-to-date version of what you need.
Probably free for you. Members of 28 state and local bar associations use the basic version of this service for free as a membership perk. It’s (definitely) worth checking with your bar association to see if you’re able to use this service for free. The premium offering (CasemakerPro) comes at an additional cost, however.
Citator Service. Its citator, CaseCheck, gives Shepard’s and KeyCite a run for their money. CaseCheck has top-notch legal editors overseeing its process and working to continually improve it, making CaseCheck a competitive and lower-cost alternative to the Westlaw and LexisNexis citators. CaseCheck is only available with a Casemaker Pro subscription.
Casemaker Pricing
Pricing depends on the jurisdiction(s) you need and the products you want. For most jurisdictions, expect to pay nothing (if your bar association offers the perk) or $50-$60/user/month (depending on whether you pay annually or monthly) for the primary legal research product. You’ll pay $80-$95/user/month (annual versus monthly) for CasemakerPro. If you’re using CasemakerPro in conjunction with a bar association membership, you’ll get a generous discount.
CasemakerPro includes everything the basic product does, plus several advanced features like CasemakerDigest, which provides the latest developments in your practice area; CiteCheck, which allows you to check if cases you cite in your brief are still good law; and the CaseCheck citator.
If your state bar does not provide Casemaker, you can try it free for five days with no obligation and without needing to enter your credit card information.
Casemaker Features
| Casemaker | ||
|---|---|---|
| Website | public.casemakerlegal.net | |
| Plans | Casemaker | Casemaker Pro |
| Starting Price | $50/mo annually; $60/mo monthly | $80/mo annually; $95/mo monthly |
| Apps | Android and iOS | Android and iOS |
| Free Trial | 5-Day Free Trial | 5-Day Free Trial |
| Cases | ✓ | ✓ |
| State Statutes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Secondary Sources | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dockets | ✓ | ✓ |
| Citation Checking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Natural Language Searching | ✓ | ✓ |
| Boolean Searching | ✓ | ✓ |
| Filter Searching | ✓ | ✓ |
| Research History | ✓ | ✓ |
| Folders | ✓ | ✓ |
| Additional Results | ✓ | ✓ |
| Alerts | ||
| Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence | ||
| Case Summaries | ||
| Formatted Downloads | ✓ | ✓ |
| News Coverage | ✓ | |
| Search without an Account | ||
| Send to Cloud Storage |
Things You Might Want to Know
Secondary sources. While litigators will find this service is useful for case law and statutory research at the state and federal levels, its secondary source catalog is vanishingly thin. The few secondary sources it does offer require a separate subscription (“Casemaker Libra”). If you regularly rely on articles and reports from bar journals and law reviews, this service almost certainly is not for you.
Apps. If you need to conduct legal research from your phone, which is something we don’t necessarily recommend, Casemaker has apps for both Android and Apple phones.
Tribal Court Opinions. Casemaker is one of the few online legal research companies that boasts a collection of tribal court decisions from around the United States. Tribal court opinions can be challenging to find online, so having this resource is a huge help for those of you who practice tribal law.
Who Casemaker is For
For litigators who don’t want to pay the astronomical prices that Westlaw and LexisNexis command, Casemaker is a robust, low-cost alternative. It has a massive database of state and federal case law and statutes and an excellent citator service. As a bonus, you may already have free access to Casemaker’s basic service through your bar association. It’s worth checking to see if it could replace any high-cost legal research tools you’re using now.
See all the key features of all the online legal research tools options in our features chart.