Skill: Search a database

Category: Review

Features and benefits

Ideal for addressing needle-in-a-haystack questions.
Excels at helping you locate relevant information in large batches of discovery documents, for example, extensive emails or text message records.
Use
Search a Database
when combing through large databases of evidence to find specific information. This cuts down time spent locating pertinent information for your case.
With
Search a Database
's ability to synthesize information across documents, you can ask a question about a set of documents, and CoCounsel will respond with an analysis of relevant information in the database.

Practice tips

Select or create a database: Ensure you have a database selected or created that you want to search.
Formulate a user prompt (query): Create a comprehensive, plain-language sentence. Your sentence should be clear and concise, communicating all relevant and material information while avoiding irrelevant details that could result in a less targeted search.
Run the search: Use the prompt to search the selected database for relevant files or information.
From the
Attach
button menu, if you select
Search a database (skill)
, CoCounsel will ask you to select a database and will only run the
Search a database
Skill.
If you want to search the entire database using a different skill (for example,
Review Documents
), you must instead select
Files from a database
and select all available files.
Make sure your user prompts are clear and concise, avoiding immaterial details. This helps CoCounsel locate the most relevant information in the database.
Be precise regarding key details, such as jurisdiction. For example: Beginner prompt: Search this database to find slip and fall cases. Intermediate prompt: Search this database to find slip and fall cases in New York. Advanced prompt: Search this database to find slip and fall cases in New York where the court ruled for the plaintiff.
If CoCounsel asks you to upload a database after you have already uploaded one, try adding the following statement to the beginning of your user prompt: “In the database provided . . . .” This will instruct CoCounsel to use the database you previously uploaded.
You can follow up on a
Search a Database
response in CoCounsel by using a new skill and asking a question about a specific document from the database.
To do this, select
Show Sources
at the bottom of the output.
In the expanded window, select the
Relevant Documents
tab, then select
+ Add to chat
next to the document about which you want to ask a follow-up question.
You can then run any skill on the documents you have added.

Limitations to keep in mind

Don’t use
Search a Database
for exhaustive searches or surveys.
The skill provides you with the most relevant information from the database. However, the result may not necessarily include an exhaustive record of every document in the database.
Search a Database
can handle only 1 question about a database at a time. This is because the skill translates each user prompt into a distinct concept and uses that concept to look for relevant information in the database.
If you ask CoCounsel to look for information related to multiple concepts simultaneously, its search will be less precise. Thus, if you have multiple questions, you must run the skill separately for each question.
Databases are generally capped at 100GB of files.
Individual file size is generally capped at:
20MB per file for TXT, HTM, HTML, or RTF files
500MB for PDF, DOC, DOCX, EML, MSG, WPD, and ZIP files
The number of files is capped at 200 files per upload
Results are AI-generated and should be verified for accuracy.