Read the Docket
A docket is the case’s table of contents — every filing, order, and event, numbered and dated. It is a research tool, not a source of authority: it tells you what exists and where to get it. Two things about it are genuinely unintuitive, and this lesson puts both in front of you: dockets usually display newest first, and one filing often arrives as one entry with many parts.
How to use this: click each entry on the fictional docket below and read what a researcher gets from it. Watch the numbering as you scroll — it runs backward, on purpose. Then take the two checks.
Demonstration — fictional docket & parties
Marsh v. Golden Rentals, LLC
Case No. 2:24-cv-01138 · U.S. District Court (D. Ariz.) · Judge: Hon. R. Calloway · Nature of suit: 890
Case No. 2:24-cv-01138 · U.S. District Court (D. Ariz.) · Judge: Hon. R. Calloway · Nature of suit: 890
Sorted: newest first ▼ — the platform default