CA State Bar Attorney Search Scraper

Search the California State Bar's public Attorney Licensee directory. Look up an attorney by name or bar number, or run an advanced search across location, certified legal specialty, language spoken, and self-reported practice area. Get license status, admission date, discipline and administrative history, standing, contact details, and self-reported practice areas — straight from apps.calbar.ca.gov. No login, no API key, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: search (quick name/firm/bar-number lookup), byBarNumber (exact bar number lookup), advanced (name + location + certified specialty + language + practice area — every filter the State Bar's own Advanced Search form exposes)
• Full licensee profile: license status, admission date, discipline & administrative history, address, phone, fax, website, law school, CLA sections, self-reported practice areas, languages spoken
• Location filters: city, state, ZIP, State Bar district, California county
• Client-side status filter: narrow results to a specific license status after fetching
• Fast bulk mode: disable full-profile enrichment to get just the summary row (name, status, bar number, city, admission date) for large name searches
• Empty fields are omitted — a field only appears when the State Bar actually published that data for the attorney

Output per attorney

• barNumber — California State Bar license number
• fullName
• licenseStatus — one of Active, Inactive, Not Eligible, Disbarred, Resigned, Judge, Deceased, RIHC, RLAA, RMSA, RSLA
• standingDescription — the State Bar's own definition of the current license status
• address, city, state, zipCode
• phone, fax, website
• claSections[] — California Lawyers Association sections
• selfReportedPracticeAreas[]
• languagesSpokenByAttorney[], languagesSpokenByStaff[]
• lawSchool
• admissionDate — ISO date (or year-month when only a month/year is published)
• disciplineHistory[] — { date, licenseStatus, discipline, adminAction } per dated status/disciplinary/administrative change (omits the always-present "Present" row)
• profileUrl — canonical Licensee Detail page
• recordType: "attorney", scrapedAt

When fetchFullProfile is disabled, only barNumber, fullName, licenseStatus, city, admissionDate, and profileUrl are returned (no detail-page fetch).

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byBarNumber / advanced
freeText	string	smith	Name, firm name, or bar number (mode=search)
soundsLike	boolean	false	Phonetic matching on name (mode=search)
barNumbers	array	–	Bar numbers to look up (mode=byBarNumber)
lastName / firstName / middleName / firmName	string	–	Name fields (mode=advanced)
lastNameMatchType etc.	string	b	b begins-with / c contains / e exactly / s sounds-like
city, cityMatchType	string	–	City filter (mode=advanced)
state	string	–	US state (mode=advanced)
zipCode	string	–	5-digit ZIP (mode=advanced)
district	string	–	State Bar geographic district 1–6, or Outside California (mode=advanced)
county	string	–	California county, Statewide, or Non-California (mode=advanced)
legalSpecialty	string	–	Board-certified legal specialty (mode=advanced)
languageSpoken	string	–	Additional language spoken (mode=advanced)
practiceArea	string	–	Self-reported practice area (mode=advanced)
statusFilter	string	–	Only emit attorneys with this current license status
fetchFullProfile	boolean	true	Fetch the full Licensee Detail page per attorney
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–500)

Examples

Example: quick name search

{
  "mode": "search",
  "freeText": "smith",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: exact bar number lookup

{
  "mode": "byBarNumber",
  "barNumbers": ["231838", "92056"]
}

Example: advanced search — immigration attorneys in Los Angeles County

{
  "mode": "advanced",
  "county": "LA",
  "practiceArea": "34",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: fast bulk export, active attorneys only

{
  "mode": "search",
  "freeText": "garcia",
  "fetchFullProfile": false,
  "statusFilter": "Active",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Use cases

• Legal due diligence — verify an attorney's license status and discipline history before engaging them
• Compliance & KYC — confirm counsel is in good standing before onboarding
• Legal recruiting — build candidate lists filtered by practice area, language, or location
• Referral services — find attorneys who speak a specific language in a given county
• Journalism & research — bulk-export discipline history for accountability reporting
• Legal directories — enrich attorney profiles with authoritative State Bar data

FAQ

What is the data source? The California State Bar's public Attorney Licensee Search (apps.calbar.ca.gov/attorney/LicenseeSearch/QuickSearch). This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the State Bar of California.

Is a login or API key required? No. The State Bar's licensee directory is fully public.

Why does standingDescription appear for some statuses but not others? It's populated from the State Bar's own published definitions, which currently cover Active, Inactive, Not Eligible, Disbarred, Resigned, RIHC, RLAA, and RMSA. Judge, Deceased, and RSLA have no published definition text, so the field is simply omitted for those.

Why is there no email field? The State Bar's profile pages obfuscate attorney email addresses behind decoy links to deter scraping; there is no reliable way to recover the real address without risking wrong data, so this actor does not attempt to extract it.

Does advanced mode support searching without any criteria? No — at least one of name, location, specialty, language, or practice area must be set, matching the State Bar's own Advanced Search form.

What does Only the first 500 results will be shown mean? The State Bar's own search UI caps every query at 500 rows. Narrow your query (more specific name, or add location/specialty filters) to see attorneys beyond the first 500.

Why do some bar numbers in byBarNumber return nothing? A small number of historical licensee records are not published as public profiles by the State Bar (e.g. very old or otherwise restricted records). The actor reports these cleanly rather than guessing at their data.

How fresh is the data? Every run fetches live pages directly from apps.calbar.ca.gov — there is no caching.

Data Source / Limitations

• Names containing non-ASCII characters (accents, diacritics) are not reliably matched by the State Bar's own Quick Search text input; use the closest ASCII spelling instead.
• The Advanced Search form occasionally returns zero results when County and Practice Area are combined with certain other filters simultaneously — this is a limitation of the State Bar's own search backend, not this actor. Try omitting one of the two filters if you get unexpectedly empty results.
• Attorney email addresses are intentionally not extracted (see FAQ above).
• Self-reported practice areas and languages are exactly that — self-reported by the attorney and not verified by the State Bar.