How-To Guide · Reading a Workbook
How to Read a Litigation Search Workbook (2026)
A litigation search on a company or person usually comes back as a scored Excel workbook with several sheets, and most of the value is lost if you jump straight to the matter count. Read in the right order, the workbook tells you what was searched, how risky the party looks, which cases drive that, and who else is connected, so you can act in minutes. This guide walks through a typical workbook sheet by sheet, the columns that matter on each, and the traps that make people over-read or under-read it. Last verified October 2026.
- Read in order: Coverage first, then the Summary band, then the Matters sheet, then Related parties.
- Coverage frames everything: a clean Summary means little if only one portal or only the entity name was searched.
- Sort by severity and status, not count: the number of matters is the least useful figure in the workbook.
- Check confidence and role: confirm each serious matter is really your party's, and how they are involved, before you react.
01What is in the workbook
A scored litigation workbook is not one list; it is a set of sheets that answer different questions. A typical workbook has four:
| Sheet | What it answers | Read it to |
|---|---|---|
| Summary | How risky does this party look overall? | Get the headline and risk band |
| Matters | Which exact cases were found? | Read the serious ones in detail |
| Related parties | Who else is connected? | See cases on directors, guarantors and group entities |
| Coverage | What was actually searched? | Know the limits before you trust the result |
For the concept behind the document, see what a litigation search report is.
02Step 1: read Coverage first
It feels backwards, but the Coverage sheet is where to start. It tells you what the search actually looked at: which forums and registries, which names and identifiers such as PAN or CIN, and the date of the search. This frames everything else. A clean-looking Summary means little if Coverage shows only one portal was searched, or only the entity name and not the directors.
Note the date too. Litigation is a moving target, and a workbook from weeks ago may not show a matter filed since. If the party relationship is ongoing, that is the case for monitoring rather than a one-time search.
03Step 2: the Summary and its risk band
The Summary gives the headline: a risk band, usually Clean, Low, Moderate or High, and the counts behind it. Use the band as triage, to decide how hard to look, not as the answer. A High band earns a close read; a Clean band, subject to coverage, can move on with the name placed on monitoring.
Remember the band reflects severity, status and confidence, not a raw count, so a party with one serious live matter can sit higher than a party with many minor ones. For what the bands mean and how they are built, see the litigation risk bands explained.
04Step 3: the Matters sheet
This is where the real work happens. The Matters sheet lists each case found, and the columns that matter most are:
- Forum and case type, telling you whether it is a civil suit, a cheque bounce complaint, an NCLT petition, a SARFAESI matter or a criminal case.
- Stage or status, showing whether it is pending, disposed or settled. Live matters weigh more than closed ones.
- Party role, whether your party is the one being proceeded against or the one who filed, which changes the meaning entirely.
- Match confidence, how strongly the case is tied to your party rather than a same-named stranger.
- Severity, the weight the matter carries, so you can sort serious from routine.
Sort by severity and status, not by count. Read the serious, live, high-confidence matters closely; skim the rest. For the exposure view that often sits alongside this, see the litigation exposure report.
05Step 4: the Related parties sheet
Risk often sits on the people, not the entity. The Related parties sheet carries the search onto directors, promoters, guarantors and connected companies. This is where you catch an invoked personal guarantee, a criminal complaint against a promoter, or a case on a sister company with common ownership, none of which show up under the operating company name.
Apply the same reading here: forum, stage, role, confidence and severity. A serious high-confidence matter on a promoter can matter more to your decision than anything on the company itself. See how to run a promoter background check.
06The traps to avoid
A few habits turn a good workbook into a wrong conclusion:
- Counting rows. The number of matters is the least useful figure in the workbook. Weigh them instead.
- Ignoring confidence. A scary total can be mostly low-confidence hits on a common name. Resolve those before reacting. See match confidence in litigation search.
- Trusting a Clean Summary without reading Coverage. Clean means nothing was found where it looked, not that nothing exists.
- Treating a finding as a verdict. Court records show what was filed, not who is right, and criminal matters carry the presumption of innocence.
Read Coverage to know the limits, read the band to know how hard to look, and read the matters to decide. In that order.
07Where Claw fits
Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.
ClawScore (at clawscore.clawlaw.in) is Claw's litigation and criminal-risk intelligence service, and the workbook described above is exactly what it produces. You name a company or a person, and ClawScore searches across 9,102 courts, benches and forums and returns a scored Excel workbook with the four sheets: a Summary carrying a ClawScore risk band of Clean, Low, Moderate or High, a Matters sheet listing each case with its forum, stage, party role, match confidence and severity, a Related parties sheet covering directors and guarantors, and a Coverage sheet showing which forums, names and identifiers were searched and on what date. Because every finding carries a match confidence that flags similar names, you can resolve the same-name trap on the Matters sheet instead of being misled by it, and because the band weights severe matters above routine ones, the sheet sorts the way you should read it. Constant Monitoring can then watch the same list of names and report New, Changed and Closed matters on a daily, weekly or monthly scan, so the workbook stays current. Results come back in under 5 seconds, judgment search spans 30 crore+ judgments with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, and Claw does not use your case documents or searched names to train its AI models. A Clean band means nothing was found in these registries on the date searched under the names searched, and the band is a triage signal, not legal advice.
To produce a workbook you can read this way, run a case search across Indian courts by party name across every forum in one place.
08Sources and further reading
- eCourts (district and High Court case status): ecourts.gov.in
- National Judicial Data Grid (official pendency data): njdg.ecourts.gov.in
- Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India: ibbi.gov.in
- Claw: clawlaw.in
This is a general guide for an Indian B2B audience, not legal advice. What any matter means for a specific decision depends on the facts, so take advice from counsel before you act.
09Frequently asked questions
How do I read a litigation search workbook?
Start with the Coverage sheet to see what was searched and when, then read the Summary and its risk band for the headline, then work through the Matters sheet sorted by severity and status, checking match confidence and party role on each serious case, and finally read the Related parties sheet for matters on directors, guarantors and connected entities.
Which sheet should I open first?
Coverage. It tells you which forums, names and identifiers were searched and on what date, which frames how much to trust everything else. A clean Summary means little if Coverage shows only one portal or only the entity name was searched.
Why not just look at the total number of cases?
Because the count is the least useful figure in the workbook. A large business carries many routine matters, and a total can be inflated by low-confidence hits on a common name. Sort by severity, status and confidence instead, so the few matters that actually change a decision rise to the top.
What does the match confidence column tell me?
How strongly a case is tied to your party rather than to a same-named stranger. A high-confidence match is reliably your party's; a low-confidence hit should be resolved before you react to it, because common names collide across court records.
Does a Clean summary mean the party has no litigation?
No. Clean means nothing was found in the registries searched, on the date searched, under the names searched. A matter under a different spelling, a sister entity or an uncovered forum can still exist, which is why you read the Coverage sheet before trusting a clean result.