Litigation Docket Watch — Federal Court Case Search & Monitor

Search federal court dockets via the CourtListener/RECAP database. Track active litigation, monitor case filings, and extract case names, filing dates, courts, and nature of suit — all as structured JSON for compliance dashboards and legal research.

What data can you get?

Court Opinions & Dockets — Search federal court opinions and docket entries by keyword. Each result includes the case name, filing date, court name, nature of suit classification, and a direct link to the full opinion on CourtListener.

Keyword Monitoring — Track specific topics like "patent infringement", "securities fraud", or company names across all federal courts. Ideal for monitoring litigation trends or tracking cases involving specific parties.

Use cases

• Corporate legal teams — Monitor litigation involving your company, competitors, or industry
• Law firms — Track case filings by practice area (antitrust, patent, securities, employment)
• Compliance officers — Get alerts when new lawsuits are filed against regulated entities
• Investigative journalists — Search federal court records for stories on corporate misconduct
• Insurance underwriters — Monitor litigation exposure for companies in your portfolio
• Academic researchers — Build datasets on litigation trends, judicial behavior, and case outcomes

How to use

1. Set keywords (e.g., ["patent infringement", "Apple"]) to filter cases
2. Optionally set since date to limit to recent filings
3. Filter by severity if needed
4. Run the actor and get structured docket data

Example input

{
  "keywords": ["antitrust", "price fixing"],
  "since": "2025-01-01",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Example output

{
  "source": "courtlistener",
  "itemId": "8847291",
  "itemName": "United States v. Google LLC",
  "itemSummary": "District of Columbia — Antitrust",
  "severity": "medium",
  "score": 5.0,
  "publishedAt": "2025-08-05T00:00:00.000Z",
  "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8847291/united-states-v-google-llc/",
  "tags": ["litigation", "docket"],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-02-14T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Data sources

• CourtListener / RECAP — Free Law Project's database of millions of federal court opinions and docket entries
• Data refreshed in real-time with every run

Pricing

Pay-per-event pricing. You only pay for what you use:

• $1.00 per actor start
• $0.004 per case record

Example: Fetching 100 recent antitrust cases costs $1.00 + $0.40 = $1.40 total.

Integrations

Works with all Apify integrations: webhooks, API, Zapier, Make, Google Sheets, and more. Schedule daily runs to monitor for new case filings matching your criteria.

Tips

• Monitor company names as keywords to catch lawsuits filed against or by specific companies. This is especially useful for investor due diligence and competitive intelligence.
• Use broad legal terms like "securities fraud" or "employment discrimination" to track litigation trends across your practice area.
• Schedule daily runs for active matters. Federal courts file new opinions throughout the day, and daily monitoring ensures timely awareness.
• Combine with OFAC Sanctions Watch for comprehensive compliance monitoring — track both litigation exposure and sanctions risk in one workflow.
• Export to your case management system via the Apify API. Most legal tech platforms can ingest JSON data from webhooks or scheduled API calls.