Legal Research Database Case Summary Highlighter

WHAT IT DOES

This script scans legal research database pages—Westlaw, LexisNexis, CourtListener, and others—for case summaries and extracts key elements including case name, citation, court, date, holding, procedural history, and key facts. It highlights important legal concepts and key phrases in the case text such as "held," "reversed," "affirmed," "remanded," "overruled," and "distinguished." A floating panel shows a summary of the case with extracted elements, a color-coded key concept legend, and a quick-reference card. A one-click export function saves the case summary as plain text or JSON. All case summary snapshots are stored per domain locally for tracking over time.

WHERE IT RUNS

Works on any legal research database page—Westlaw, LexisNexis, CourtListener, Fastcase, or any page displaying case opinions with legal terminology. The script detects case names, citations, courts, dates, holdings, procedural history, and key facts using common legal document patterns, making it compatible with most legal research platforms.

HOW TO USE

The panel appears automatically when you visit a case page. It detects the case name, citation, court, date, holding, procedural history, and key facts, then displays a quick-reference card with all extracted elements. The case text on the page is highlighted with color-coded underlines for key legal terms: Holding (blue), Reversed (red), Affirmed (green), Remanded (orange), Overruled (purple), Distinguished (yellow), Cited (cyan), and Procedural (pink). A legend shows the color coding for each term type. Toggle "Highlight Legal Terms" on/off to control highlighting. Click "Refresh Data" to rescan for updated case content. Export the case summary as plain text or JSON for citation or reference. Use "Clear History" to reset stored snapshots for the current domain. The panel automatically saves a snapshot each time you visit, building a history of your case research.

TECHNICAL MECHANISM: CASE SUMMARY EXTRACTION WITH LEGAL TERM HIGHLIGHTING AND COLOR-CODED LEGEND

The script uses a comprehensive detection strategy. First, it scans the page text for case names using the "v." pattern (e.g., "Smith v. Jones"), citations using the "Volume Reporter Page" pattern (e.g., "123 F.3d 456"), courts using "Court: [Name]" patterns, and dates using common date formats. Holdings are extracted by searching for key phrases like "held that," "the court held," "holds that," "holding," and capturing the sentence containing the phrase. Procedural history is extracted from "Procedural History:" or "Procedurally:" patterns. Key facts are extracted from "Facts:" or "Factual Background:" patterns. For highlighting, the script walks text nodes and applies regex word-boundary matching to detect legal terms from a predefined dictionary with eight categories: holding (blue), reversed (red), affirmed (green), remanded (orange), overruled (purple), distinguished (yellow), cited (cyan), and procedural (pink). Each matched term is wrapped in a span with a background color (20% opacity) and a bottom border in the term's color. A legend displays all term categories with their colors. Each snapshot stores the extracted summary data with a timestamp, capped at 30 entries per domain.

THE PANEL

The case summary highlighter appears in a draggable, resizable panel that remembers its position per site. The panel shows a quick-reference card with extracted case elements and a color-coded legal terms legend. Drag by the header to reposition, collapse to a compact icon with a click, and resize using the bottom-right corner. The panel snaps to screen edges for tidy placement and closes with the Escape key. All settings—highlighting toggle and panel position—persist per website using GM_setValue, so your view returns exactly as you left it.

PLEASE NOTE

This script requires the free BotGentz extension to run. The script relies on common legal document patterns—if a case uses a non-standard format, extraction may be incomplete. The highlighting modifies the page's text by wrapping terms in span elements; this may affect page styling. The legal term dictionary includes the most common case terms but may not cover all variations. The script does not access your legal database account credentials—all data is read from the visible page and exported locally. All data is stored locally in your browser via GM_setValue and never transmitted. The script is designed for summarizing and highlighting case text, not for modifying or uploading data to legal research databases.