About Smart Search, Generally
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      1. Trellis Research Knowledge Base
      2. Smart Search Basics
      3. About Smart Search, Generally

      How Is Trellis Smart Search Different from Searching a County Court Website?

      Using Smart Search, you may find information and cases you never knew existed if you only used the county court website.

      Features Trellis County Court Websites
      Finding Dockets Using Smart Search, you may search for court Dockets using any keywords you want (including case number, party name, attorney name, judge name, legal issue, motion type, etc.).  There is no way to search individual county court websites by anything other than a case number or a party name.  
      Searching for Info from Multiple Courts at the Same Time Using Smart Search, you may search across multiple courts and multiple states from a single interface.   There is no way to search across multiple courts from a single interface.  Each county court has its own separate website.
      Tentative Ruling Database The Trellis database aggregates all tentative Rulings in CA and makes them keyword searchable from a single interface, preserving this valuable judicial data and case intel.   There is no searchable database of CA tentative rulings.  Tentative rulings are generally removed by county courts within 24 hours of posting.
      Finding Filed Documents Using Keywords Using Smart Search, you may search for filed Documents using any keywords you want (including case number, party name, judge name, legal issue, motion type, etc.).  There is no way to search filed documents on county court websites.
      Judge Biographies and Analytics Trellis has in-depth Biographies for every state trial court judge, and offers Judge Analytics with motion grant-rate metrics. County court websites do not include judge biographies or judge analytics.
      Free Documents Trellis offers many filed documents for free based on your subscription.   Many county courts charge for filed documents which may already be available through Trellis’ crowdsourced document library.