Creating your first case

From your dashboard, click "New case" to open the case creation flow. DocTik gives you four ways to get started, depending on how much information you already have and how much typing you want to do.

If you prefer to enter details yourself, choose manual entry. You will be asked for the essentials:

• A case title (for example, "Smith v. Oakwood Apartments")
• Your role — plaintiff, defendant, petitioner, or respondent
• The case type (eviction, employment, consumer, contract, and so on)
• The court and county, and a case number if one has been assigned

You can leave fields blank and fill them in later. Manual entry is a good choice when you are just starting out and a complaint has not been filed yet.

Not sure how to describe your situation? The AI-guided option lets you explain what is going on in plain language, and the assistant asks follow-up questions to build the case for you. Tell it something like "My landlord is trying to evict me in Las Vegas and I got served papers last week," and it will help identify your role, case type, court, and likely deadlines.

This is the friendliest path if you are new to the legal process and unsure what information matters.

If you already have structured case data — perhaps exported from another tool or assembled by the AI in a chat — you can paste it as JSON to create a fully populated case in one step. DocTik validates the structure and tells you if anything is missing before creating the case.

The fastest option when your case is already filed: import directly from the court docket. Enter your case number and DocTik pulls the parties, filings, and hearing dates from the court system. This works for supported California and Nevada courts, including Clark County (case numbers like A-25-934767-C).

See "Importing your case from the court docket" for the full list of supported courts and case-number formats.

Once your case exists, start uploading documents so the AI can analyze them, and review the timeline DocTik builds for any deadlines it detected. You can edit any detail at any time.