Court Records Scraper

Overview

The Court Records Scraper is an Apify actor that extracts public court records from CourtListener, a comprehensive free legal research platform maintained by Free Law Project. It collects case names, case numbers, court names, filing dates, parties, judges, case status, and docket entries to support legal research, due diligence, and compliance monitoring.

Features

• Search court records by keyword across all federal and state courts
• Filter by specific court jurisdiction (Supreme Court, Circuit Courts, District Courts)
• Date range filtering to focus on recent or historical cases
• Extract case parties, assigned judges, and filing information
• Access docket entries and case summaries
• Uses both CourtListener API and HTML scraping for maximum coverage

Input Configuration

The actor accepts the following input parameters:

• searchTerms - Search terms for court cases (e.g., patent infringement, breach of contract). Defaults to patent infringement.
• court - Court filter code (e.g., all, scotus, ca9, txed). Use 'all' for all courts. Defaults to all.
• maxResults - Maximum number of records to return. Defaults to 100.
• dateRange - Filing date range in YYYY-YYYY format (e.g., 2024-2026). Defaults to 2024-2026.

Output Format

Each court record in the output dataset includes:

• caseName - Full case name (e.g., Smith v. Jones Corp.)
• caseNumber - Docket or case number
• court - Court name or jurisdiction code
• filingDate - Date the case was filed
• parties - Plaintiff and defendant names
• judge - Assigned judge name
• status - Case status (Active, Closed, etc.)
• docketEntries - Summary of docket entries or case snippets
• searchTerm - The search term that matched this case
• url - CourtListener case page URL
• scrapedAt - Data extraction timestamp

Use Cases

This scraper is essential for lawyers and paralegals conducting legal research, corporate legal departments performing due diligence on business partners, compliance teams monitoring litigation risks, journalists investigating legal proceedings, academic researchers studying judicial patterns, and individuals checking for lawsuits involving specific companies or individuals. The docket entry data provides insight into case progress and key filings.

Cost and Performance

The actor runs on minimal memory (256 MB) and leverages the CourtListener API for fast results. Pricing follows Apify platform billing with pay-per-event at $1.50 per 1,000 results, reflecting the specialized nature of legal data extraction.

Integrations

Export court record data using Apify integrations to Google Sheets, databases, Slack, Zapier, or custom APIs. The structured JSON output integrates with legal case management systems, compliance tracking tools, and research databases.

Tips and Troubleshooting

• Use specific legal terms for targeted results (e.g., "patent infringement" rather than just "patent")
• Court codes follow CourtListener conventions: scotus (Supreme Court), ca9 (9th Circuit), txed (Eastern District of Texas)
• The date range format is YYYY-YYYY; both years are inclusive
• For the most comprehensive results, use "all" as the court filter
• CourtListener has the best coverage for federal courts; state court coverage varies