What Is "Smart Search"?

Smart Search using Natural Language is easy to use.

You will not find Federal court or Court of Appeals data on Trellis.

Selecting multiple states in the search bar lets you run a single Smart Search across hundreds of county courts at once. Using natural language, you can simply describe the cases, dockets, or court documents you’re looking for, and Trellis will surface the most relevant results from across its database.

When you run a search on Smart Search, the search results page will display up to four tabs (or buckets) of data:  

• Rulings:  This tab will display CA tentative rulings that contain your keywords. **Note: For rulings in other states, search keywords (decision OR order) in the Documents tab.
• Dockets:  This tab will display court cases that contain your keywords.  
• Documents:  This tab will display court documents that contain your keywords.  
• Verdicts: This tab will display verdict data and analytics based on your keywords (across CA and NY) and give you access to the underlying cases. **Note: Verdicts is an add-on.

If your keywords do not appear in a court Docket, Document, Verdict, or tentative Ruling, you will not see search results.  The body and text of court documents are searchable in the Smart Search Documents tab on Trellis (not just the title), which means you can find information and cases that you never knew existed if you only used the county court website!

Smart Search - Basics - Watch Video