Call the Oregon State Bar at (503) 620-0222 or (800) 452-8260 and ask for Casemaker assistance during normal business hours. OSB business hours are from 8 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday thru Friday. You may also e-mail casemaker@osbar.org for assistance with problematic issues.

Inactive members can purchase a subscription to Casemaker for $50 per calendar year. A form is available here that can be mailed to the bar with payment.

The OSB has prepared a PDF guide available for download suitable for printing. There is also an online guide: after logging into Casemaker, click on the help button in the upper right-hand portion of the Casemaker navigation bar.

The actual Casemaker Web Library is located on the Lawriter Web site located in Cincinnati. When you access Casemaker you are transferred from the OSB Web site to the Lawriter site.

- You are not entering your five-digit bar number correctly.
Please check your entry in the Member Directory. (Please note: A sixth digit is merely an OSB error-checking number for more accurate data entry.)

- You are misspelling your password or entering the wrong password.
Please have your password resent.

- The bar may have an incorrect entry for your birthday.
Please call (503) 620-0222 or (800) 452-8260 and check our records.

- Your computer many not be accepting “cookies,” which are small files which allow you to authenticate your indentity with the server. You might need to change your security settings to allow for cookies or at a minimum allow your browser to accept cookies from the www.lawriter.net (Casemaker) and www.osbar.org websites. Following are some links to cookie setup intructions for some of the most popular browsers. Take special note of the session cookie instructions, as these are the only cookies OSB or Casemaker will use to authenticate you.

Pick the book where the official citation would appear and click on the search option. Once you are in the search screen, click on the “Advanced Search” tab. You will see the cite field. Simply type the exact citation in the cite field and you will pull up that case. Make sure that you type in the exact citation.

Pick the book where the case would appear and click on the search option. Once you are at the search screen, click on the “Advanced Search” tab. You will see the cite field. Take your mouse and click the radio button directly above the cite field that says, “case name.” By changing to “case name” the cite field is now expecting you to plug in a case name instead of an official citation. Simply type in one or both of the parties names and hit search. You should not put in the v. or even the full case name, just the most unique portions of each parties name. And, if one of the parties names is very unique, only one names is necessary.

Currently the Casemaker Web Library doesn’t allow you to search multiple books using built-in search functionality. However, utilizing tools built in to your Web browser, you can open additional versions of your Web browser and search different books almost simultaneously.

Once you are in Casemaker, you can press “CTRL” and the letter “N” (CTRL +N) to quickly open another browser. Doing this numerous times allows you to open several windows and perform various searches at the same time (i.e. search statutes and search case law). You are limited by the memory on your computer.

The ranking algorithm takes into consideration relative word ordering, word proximity, database frequency, document frequency, and position in text.

There are several things you can do to narrow your search, including: - Add additional key words to your search, using the revise search button. - If you are searching for a phrase, make sure you are placing the phrase inside of quotes. (Ex. “next of kin”)- Utilize the tools available to you in the Advanced Search Screen that allow you to narrow the proximity in which your key words/phrases appear, utilize the fields in conjunction with key words in the full document search query or use the date range option.

There are several reasons you could be getting this error message, including:- You have developed too narrow of a search. Consider reducing the number of key words or phrases in your search query. - You might have misspelled one of the words in the search string, field entry, etc. Casemaker search logic looks for the exact spelling of key words. - Make sure you are searching the correct book.