Onboarding Resources

Find better arguments faster, avoid blind spots, and move with strategic clarity with attorney's briefcase. Perfect for those who litigate or handle contested matters. Depending on your product tier, you may have access to the attorney's briefcase modules covering California family law and evidence. Jump to these modules using the quick links on the Family Law Hub overview page or by using the navigation menu in the upper left corner. We'll spend most of our time in the California Family Law module in this video, but all information can be applied to the California Evidence module as well. The updates tab of the attorney's briefcase modules contain a running list of the newest holdings applicable to family law or evidence. These are the same holdings that live under cases of interest on the family law hub overview page sorted between family law and evidence issues in their respective modules. Instead of one or two practice area tags applicable to an entire case like in the hub, when listed here, each holding is given a more precise outline of topics and subtopics so you can more easily identify whether this new change in law is going to directly impact an issue you are currently handling. You will see the following abbreviations in our holdings. You can also find this list in the CEB help center at help dot c e b dot com. If there are any abbreviations in our holdings that are not clear, please contact our customer support team who will work with our content attorneys to help you sort it out. To learn more about a holding, click on an update. You'll be taken to the holdings card where you can find a factual recap of the case and a robust synopsis of the holding. The card also contains the case citation near the top, which links to the full case text and displays its TruSight treatment. As elsewhere on the CEB platform, the case will appear in the lower right corner of the page to help you maintain focus on your research. Once you're done reviewing the case, you can print it, open it to its own browser tab, or close it out. When you go to a holdings card from the updates page, you view it in the context of its narrowest subtopic, which means you see a list of all other holdings on this issue along the left side. For example, the narrowest subtopic for this update is presumed father. Along the left, you'll see there are a total of twenty four holdings on this topic, including the newest one. You can go between cards using this list. While every card contains the facts and holding, some cards also include notes and commentary to offer more context and analysis. To access all the cards within a module, click on the cards tab at the top. This tab allows you to find the relevant up to date authorities faster, any consistent structure that mirrors how family law problems are argued in practice. You can navigate through the cards by following the logical topic and subtopic hierarchy to narrow in on your issue. You will see that some topics have a number to the right while others do not. A number to the right tells you how many cards are on this topic and that there are no additional subtopics. Clicking on that topic will display the holdings related to that issue. Clicking on a holding will take you to its full card, like you saw when we viewed the cards from the updates page. When you click on a list of topic that does not have a number to the right of it, a list of all related subtopics will appear, which you can continue navigating through until you reach a subtopic with a number next to it. If you get to a list and are conflicted on which subtopic to narrow in on, you can view all holdings for that list by clicking view all cards at the top. Here's an example of how to use this system. Say you're handling a move away case. Under this structure, your first and broadest topic would be custody and visitation. From the long list of subtopics, you'd go to factors considered in custody and visitation award next. Among the list of factors, you'd find and click change in residence slash moveaways. You are then presented with a list of all issues that come up in moveaway cases. Each issue has its own set of holdings and cards. Here, as in many areas within the attorney's briefcase modules, you'll find that the content is structured around the positions a client is actually taking, such as cases supporting a move away versus cases opposing one. You can efficiently and effectively see how courts have treated both sides of a common dispute, giving you the advantage of anticipating and planning for opposing arguments. Another avenue for finding the information you need is to search through the cards using natural language or key terms. This allows you to find all the cards possibly related to the issue regardless of where they live in the structure. From your list of results, you can click into a specific holding or by clicking any of the topic tags listed below a holding, you can view the list of all cards on that issue. When we search move away, most of the results follow the topic and subtopic hierarchy we navigated before, but there are a couple at the bottom of the first page that are in a different spot in the structure. Maybe you see a holding in the list of results that gives you what you need or maybe seeing the other tagged topics below a holding sparks an idea for more research or strategy. These search results offer more than just statements of law. The citations tab in the attorney's briefcase modules are a bit citations different than other lists of primary law you will see in the CEB research platform. Listed alphabetically, these are the cases and statutes that serve as the basis for all the cards within the module. This tab is most helpful if you know the name of a case and want to see all the holdings that have come out of that case. You can navigate using the alphabet along the top, but most times it will likely be easier to search for the case by name within the citations tab. A good example of this is the influential case in remarriage of Epstein. You could go to the e list and scroll down to find the case or use the find function in your browser to search the name. Clicking the case name here will take you to the list of all holdings from this case. An even easier direct route would be to search Epstein in the search bar at the top. Clicking the case name in the search results will open up the case text in the pop up window. To view all holdings pulled from that case, click the number of citing cards just below the case name. Finally, the codes, rules, and regulations tab is a list of all statutes that a family law attorney might need to use, including some federal statutes that aren't included in any other module on the CEB platform. Searching within this tab will only return results from the listed codes, rules, and regulations. The attorneys briefcase modules are so much more than just an encyclopedia of laws directly relevant to California family law and evidence. They can serve as an issue spotting aid, a research and strategy tool, and an efficiency engine. When you want to avoid blind spots and move with strategic clarity, start here. Get acquainted with this slightly nontraditional structure today.