The Shepard's® Citation Service provides a comprehensive report of the cases, statutes, secondary sources, and annotations that cite your authority, including more recent cases that rely on your starting case. You can then use this report to quickly validate your research and ensure you have good law.
Answers to many questions you may have while checking citations are available from the Shepard's "Check a Citation" form and the Shepard's® report:
Your Shepard's® Report provides both a quick overview of the way a case has been treated by subsequent case law (the Shepard's summary) and the thoroughness and completeness of the full report, including headnotes. For easy access to the information you need, you can:
Select one of the links below for more information about browsing the Shepard's Report.
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At the top of the Shepard's report, you'll see the word Shepardize®. You can use the field next to it to check another citation at any point when viewing your results. Just enter a different citation and click the Go button. Repeat this process as often as you like.
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You can look at your list of search results in three different view formats (Cite, KWIC or Full) available through links at the top of your browse page. Each view format displays a different level of detail.
To print, download, Fax or Email selected documents in any view format, click the check boxes next to the documents you want to deliver. Then, select Print, Download, Fax or Email. On the delivery form that appears, you'll see the document numbers you selected displayed in the Selected Documents box under Document Range.
Note: These check boxes only apply to document delivery—they have no effect on the FOCUS™ feature.
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You will see this view format only when the Shepard's report retrieves multiple documents for the citation you entered. Click one of the listed citations to display the Shepard's report for it.
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Choose this view to limit your results to Subsequent Appellate History and those citing references that have editorial analysis or that were added within the most recent two months.
You can easily switch view formats by clicking on the appropriate link.
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Choose this view to display the complete Shepard's report, including prior history and subsequent appellate history as well as all citing references from cases, statutes, law reviews and periodicals, and other secondary sources.
You can easily switch view formats by clicking on the appropriate link.
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This line tells you how many total citing references are displayed in the current Shepard's report for this case, and how many ("n of nnn") are displayed on this page. If there are more citations in the report than are displayed on this page, you can use the "Prev" and "Next" buttons to "page" through the report.
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When you click the "Display Options" link, you'll see a list of options you can apply to the Shepard's report you are currently viewing. To set these options for all cites you Shepardize in the future, click the "Set Defaults" link to go to the Shepard's Check a Citation Preferences page.
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Click the Unrestricted link to view all citing references for the case you entered, with no restrictions applied.
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Click the "Save As Shepard's Alert" link to set up this citation as a Shepard's Alert. The Shepard's Alert feature lets you run regularly scheduled Shepard's reports to obtain updates about changes to citations.
For more information about the Shepard's Alert® feature, click here to view a tutorial.
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Click the Return to Shepard's Alert link to go back to the Shepard's Alert you were reviewing.
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Click the All Neg link to view only the citing references with negative analyses. The citing references list will contain only cites with negative analysis such as criticized, overruled or distinguished.
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Click the All Pos link to view only the citing references with positive analyses. The citing references list will contain only cites with positive analysis.
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Click the "FOCUS™ - Restrict By" link to view only citing references with customized restrictions. You'll see a page where you can specify restrictions by FOCUS™ terms, analysis, jurisdiction, or headnote and date of the decision. You can select restrictions in each category, or click the "Select All" link to select all the restrictions in that category. You can also use the "Clear All " link to clear all your selections in a category.
Note: If you select all restrictions in a category, your report will contain all citing references in that category (as if you had selected "any" analysis code, "any" jurisdiction, etc.).
After selecting all desired restrictions, click Apply. If you make some choices but then want to start over, click the Cancel button to clear the current choices.
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The Shepard's Signal indicator displayed at the top of the page indicates how other legal authorities have treated your case. To see a definition of the indicator, leave your mouse pointer over the signal for a few seconds. For a definition of all of the Shepard's Signal indicators, click the Legend link on the bottom navigation bar.
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Click this link to generate a Shepard's table of authorities (TOA) for the citing references in the Shepard's report. The Shepard's TOA gives you the same result as Shepardizing™ each cited reference—instantly. The Shepard's table of authorities lists each cited reference in your case, in order by jurisdiction.
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In the body of the Shepard's report, citing references are followed by a Shepard's Signal when this option is checked on the Shepard's Preferences page. By default, this option is turned off; to turn it on, click the "Display Options" link at the top left of the page, and click "Citing Ref. Signals" (or go to the Shepard's Preferences page and check Show Citing Reference Signals under Shepard's Default Display).
This is an indicator of the treatment history of the citing reference and allows you to further research the treatment history of your original case by evaluating the citing references. For example, if you Shepardize® a case and see a citing reference that followed the case, a red Shepard's Signal indicator next to the citing reference will inform you that there was negative treatment assigned to the case that followed the Shepardized™ case.
Note: The Shepard's Signal in citing references is unrelated to the treatment displayed at the beginning of the citing reference. The treatment indicates how the citing reference treated the case you Shepardized.
You can click the Shepard's Signal indicator at the end of the citing reference to Shepardize the citing reference.
Note: Not every citing reference will have a Shepard's Signal indicator.
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The Shepard's Summary gives you a quick overview of how the case was treated by subsequent case law. It shows at a glance:
and lists the number of warning, cautionary, or positive analyses, as well as other places the case is cited (such as in law reviews, treatises, or annotated statutes).
To go directly to the place in the report where an analysis is listed or the case is cited in other source material, just click that analysis or source. To go to the next place showing that analysis, click the right arrow on the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. To return to the Summary, click "Summary" on the navigation bar. (For more information on using the navigation bar, click Using the Navigation Bar.)
If you do not want to display the Shepard's Summary, click the "Hide Summary" button. Clicking the "Hide Summary" button hides the summary while you are viewing the current report, or until you click the "Show Shepard's Summary" button. If you clear the "Show Summary" box on the Shepard's Check a Citation Option page, the summary remains closed until you check the box again.
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Use the navigation bar at the bottom of the page to go directly to specific parts of the Shepard's report. The following links are available on the navigation bar:
To go to the location of a particular analysis, click it in the list. For example, if you click "Overruled", you'll see the first citing reference with that analysis, and the total number of citing references with that analysis is displayed in the navigation bar. To go to a different reference, such as the fourth, enter "4" in the box next to the analysis and click the Go button, or use the right and left arrows to navigate through the report.
If you don't want the navigation bar to display, clear "Show Lower Navigation Frame" on the General Preferences page. (Note: This also turns off the display of the navigation bar for your regular search results.)
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Using the FOCUS feature with the Shepard's Citations Service enables you to refine your results so you can closely target your references. No new documents are retrieved during a FOCUS search; your FOCUS results are derived from your original results. You may first want to use restrictions to narrow your results before applying the FOCUS feature (restrictions are not available with the Shepard's table of authorities).
Keep in mind that the FOCUS feature searches only those documents that are actually available on the
You can use many search tools to apply the FOCUS feature to your Shepard's results, including segment searches, proximity connectors (w/n, or, and), universal characters (* and !), the ATLEAST command, and others.
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When viewing a case law document, you can further research that citation by clicking the Shepardize link. Doing this runs the current citation through the Shepard's® Citations Service and verifies whether that case is still good, while also reporting other cases that have cited your case.
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