Nevada Case Law Research Guide

The Nevada Appellate Courts website lets you see recent decisions from the Nevada Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, but it’s not the best for research. You can look up cases by number or by the names of people involved, but you can’t search the text of the cases. The site also shows recent decisions that haven’t been printed yet. For older cases, you can find them if you know the volume and page number. For better searches, try tools like Google Scholar, Fastcase, Bloomberg Law, Lexis+, or Westlaw, which have more features and better search options.

Limitations of the Website

While the Nevada Appellate Courts website provides immediate access to recently issued opinions from the Nevada Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, it is not ideal for comprehensive case law research.

Features of the Website

• Case Lookup Search
  The homepage offers a case lookup tool for active files, but the search options are limited to:

  • Case Number
  • "Caption Contains" (which includes party names but not subject matter keywords).

• Access to Nevada Reports
  The website links directly to the Nevada Reports, where you can locate cases using a citation (volume and page number). However, there is no full-text search capability for opinions.

• Unpublished Orders

  • Nevada Supreme Court Unpublished Orders are organized by date. To locate a specific order, you need to know the party name and the approximate date it was issued.
  • Similarly, Nevada Court of Appeals Unpublished Orders are available but require the same information for retrieval.

• Advance Opinions
  For recently issued opinions that have not yet been included in a printed volume of the Nevada Reports, the website provides links to advance opinions.

• Forthcoming Opinions
  The website also posts forthcoming opinions, typically on Thursdays. However, there is no guarantee that opinions will be released on any given Thursday.

Overview

The Caselaw Access Project (CAP) combines scans from Harvard Law School’s Library print collection of official state and federal case reporters with annual updates from Fastcase to provide free public access to U.S. law.

Scope

CAP covers cases from:

• State Courts
• Federal Courts
• Territorial Courts, including:
  • American Samoa
  • Dakota Territory
  • Guam
  • Native American Courts
  • Navajo Nation
  • Northern Mariana Islands

The collection spans cases from 1658 to 2020. For Nevada, CAP includes case law from the Nevada Reports from 1868 to 2013 (volumes 1 Nev. to 129 Nev.).

Document Quality

CAP relies on scans of original publications, so the quality of the scans may vary.

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is used to identify words for keyword searches. However, due to scan quality, some search results may be incomplete or inaccurate.

Search Features

CAP allows searches by:

• Citation, including Nevada Reports citations and recent regional decisions published in the Pacific Reporter.
• Note: Only the third edition (P.3d) of the Pacific Reporter is currently available through Fastcase.

Another alternative for free, full-text searching for Nevada judicial opinions, try Google Scholar. Google Scholar claims to have state appellate cases beginning in 1950.

For information on how to search Google Scholar, please visit the Law Library of Congress for an explanation on how to use Google Scholar to research case law. 

If you are an active Nevada State Bar member, your membership includes Fastcase. 

From the Nevada State Bar's website, "Fastcase includes access to federal and Nevada caselaw, local federal rules, reporters, links to court forms, Attorney General’s opinions, bankruptcy decisions, administrative regulations and other information important to state bar members" 

The NSCLL offers public access to Bloomberg Law, Lexis+, and Westlaw Precision through the patron access computers in the library.

These legal research platforms provide a more complete collection of case law as well as a more sophisticated search functionality than either Google Scholar or CAP. For example, you may search for cases in several ways: