CourtListener: Free Legal Research and Data Platform
CourtListener helps law firms and legal researchers access primary legal materials. It is designed for those who need to track case law or analyze raw legal data.
At a glance
- Category
- Legal
- Best for
- Law Firms, Legal Researchers, Journalists, Academics
- Pricing
- The website is free to use. Access to APIs and bulk data services uses means-based pricing. Buyers should confirm current pricing on the vendor website.
- Key use cases
- Legal Research, Case Monitoring, Federal Filing Access, Empirical Legal Analysis
- Official website
- www.courtlistener.com
CourtListener is a free legal research website operated by the non-profit Free Law Project. It provides a searchable repository of millions of legal opinions from federal and state courts across 471 jurisdictions, as well as oral argument recordings and financial disclosures.
The tool is designed for lawyers, journalists, academics, and the general public. It helps users find cases by name, topic, or citation and includes a citator to identify subsequent opinions that have referenced a specific case.
For organizations needing to handle legal data at scale, the platform provides REST APIs, database replication, and bulk data files.
Buyers should confirm that while the website is free, access to the APIs and bulk data services involves means-based pricing to support the non-profit's operations.
Key Features
Search millions of legal opinions by case name, topic, or citation across hundreds of jurisdictions.
Supports daily, weekly, or monthly email alerts for specific search queries to track new court documents.
Provides access to a collection of documents from the Federal PACER system.
Search and listen to millions of minutes of oral argument recordings.
Provides a structured database of judges and financial disclosure records.
Offers REST APIs, webhooks, and database replication for legal data access.
Use Cases
Searching for precedential opinions and using the citator to identify if a case has been cited in subsequent opinions.
Setting up alerts to receive notifications when new case law matching a specific topic or query is published.
Browsing the RECAP Archive to find federal court documents.
Using bulk data files and APIs to conduct research on legal corpora.
Best For
Pricing
The website is free to use. Access to APIs and bulk data services uses means-based pricing. Buyers should confirm current pricing on the vendor website.
FAQ
The legal research website is free. However, the platform uses means-based pricing for those who require access to its REST APIs and bulk data services.
The RECAP Archive is an open collection of federal court data from the PACER system, allowing users to access documents that have been donated to the public collection.
Yes, users can sign up for daily, weekly, or monthly email alerts for any search query.
Source category: Legal
Source subcategory: Legal Research
