CourtListener Librarian Guide
We have compiled a list of our ever-expanding features and capabilities in CourtListener. We hope librarians, researchers, educators, and other users find this resource helpful.
Advanced Research
CourtListener is an advanced platform that supports complex research workflows across a vast corpus.
-
Keyword Search with advanced query techniques and operators support highly advanced Boolean queries across case law, PACER data, and oral argument transcripts.
-
Semantic Search lets you search case law using natural language. Instead of exact keyword matching, it finds relevant opinions based on the meaning of your query. Hybrid search lets you combine natural language with specific keywords by wrapping words or phrases in quotation marks.
-
Citation Search lets you look at all the opinions or filings that cite an opinion of interest and then filter those results so that you only see case law citing that opinion from particular jurisdictions, dates, keywords, etc. For example: "All the cases that site Miranda v. Arizona from the Fifth Circuit that mention drugs in the last five years."
-
Our MCP Server can be integrated into AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT to ground topics and to empower the agents to research on your behalf.
Alerting
CourtListener began as an legal awareness platform (hence the name) and sends millions of email alerts each year.
-
Opinion Alerts allow users to be notified when new opinions match their search terms and filters.
-
Citation Alerts make it possible to keep up with citations to a case of interest.
-
Docket Alerts allow users to be notified when there is an update to a particular docket. We send thousands of docket alerts per day.
-
Search Alerts allow users to follow topics, people, organizations, types of cases—anything you can search for, you can monitor.
-
Relative date queries can be used to keep searches and alerts dynamically up to date.
Case Law
This is our collection of legal decisions. Courtlistener has one of the most comprehensive collections of American Legal Jurisprudence on the Internet.
-
We have nearly ten million legal decisions dating from 1650's to today across state, federal, and tribal courts, with updates coming in hourly.
-
We are scanning millions of pages of case law directly from the books to keep our content up to date.
-
Parenthetical summaries of cases, written by judges, are available for many opinions. These contain the holdings of nearly every important case.
-
Notes can be added to opinions to keep track of your thoughts about them.
RECAP Suite
The RECAP Archive in CourtListener is the biggest open collection of federal court data on the internet.
About 
Blog Data Coverage Try it Out
-
RECAP Extension, used by over 30,000 people, is a private and secure way to contribute your PACER purchases to CourtListener and to freely access anything somebody else has added to the archive.
-
The RECAP Archive is a fully searchable database of tens of millions of PACER cases and hundreds of millions of docket entries.
-
RSS Feeds are available for dockets and RECAP search if you prefer to receive your updates via RSS rather than email.
-
Pray and Pay is a system so you can "Pray" for PACER documents you want, and others can grant those prayers by "Paying" for them on your behalf.
-
Tags allow you to organize and describe the docket.
-
Notes can be added to RECAP dockets and documents.
-
@recap.email is a better version of your PACER notification emails. Your emails become more readable and searchable, with quick access to free RECAP content. Any filings linked in your PACER alerts are automatically added to RECAP.
Oral Arguments
The biggest collection of oral argument audio on the internet.
-
Podcasts allow you to subscribe to oral argument audio as it is published by a court.
-
Notes can be added to oral arguments.
-
Transcripts are available for oral argument audio, allowing you to search, set alerts, and even follow along line-by-line.
Judges
Information about thousands of judges from federal and state courts.
-
Financial Disclosures is the biggest database of judicial disclosures ever made.
-
Judge Portraits is an open collection of meticulously edited and organized photos of judges that can be dropped into websites or other applications.
Edu Memberships
We offer complimentary memberships with generous API access for anybody with an active .edu email address or a recently published paper.
Data Services
Data services on CourtListener include APIs, a replicated database offering, an MCP server, webhooks, and bulk legal data.
