Federal Court Records Scraper ⚖️ — PACER / RECAP Dockets & Court Opinions

Extract US federal court records — dockets, docket entries, filed documents, parties, attorneys, judges and full court opinions — as clean, structured data. No PACER account, no per-page fees, no headless browser.

Search across all US federal courts (district, appellate, bankruptcy) and the Supreme Court, then export everything to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or pull it straight from the Apify API.

💡 Why this actor? PACER itself is login-gated and charges $0.10 per page. This actor gets you the federal court records you need — dockets, documents, parties, judges and opinions — fee-free and ready to analyze.

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📋 Table of contents

• What does it do?
• Use cases
• How to use it
• Input parameters
• Input examples
• Output — data fields
• Sample output record
• Rate limits & large runs
• Tips & best practices
• Frequently asked questions
• Changelog

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What does it do?

Search and export federal court data across the entire US federal judiciary. Choose exactly what you want:

• ✅ Cases with documents (RECAP dockets) — federal cases with their filed documents
• ✅ Dockets (metadata only) — fast case-level metadata
• ✅ Opinions / case law — judicial opinions and decisions, with citations
• ✅ Filing documents — individual filings (complaints, motions, orders…)
• ✅ Judges — federal judge profiles
• ✅ Oral argument audio — appellate oral arguments

For every case you get case name, court, docket number, filing/termination dates, the assigned judge, nature of suit, cause of action, parties, attorneys, law firms, the PACER case ID, and a list of documents (with descriptions, page counts and direct PDF links where available).

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Use cases

⚖️ Lawyers & litigation teams

• Track new filings against a company, person, or in a practice area.
• Pull dockets and documents for case research and due diligence.
• Build litigation datasets by court, judge, or nature of suit.

📊 Litigation finance & legal analytics

• Analyse filing trends, judge assignment, case duration and outcomes.
• Monitor bankruptcy and IP cases at scale.
• Feed structured docket data into models and dashboards.

📰 Journalists & researchers

• Find and follow newsworthy cases and parties.
• Aggregate court opinions and case law for analysis.
• Study the federal judiciary with clean, exportable data.

🏢 Compliance, insurance & due diligence

• Screen entities for federal litigation history.
• Monitor parties of interest across all federal courts.

🤖 Data & AI teams

• Build legal-NLP datasets from opinions and filings.
• Power retrieval over dockets, parties and documents.

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How to use it (step by step)

No coding required.

1. Click Try for free / Start.
2. Choose What to search (e.g. "Cases with documents", or "Opinions / case law").
3. Enter a Search query — a company, party name, keyword or case name (e.g. Apple). Or leave it empty and filter by court/date.
4. Optionally set a Court ID (e.g. nysd, cand, scotus) and a date range.
5. Set Max items (start with 100).
6. (Recommended for big runs) paste an API token to raise rate limits.
7. Click Save & Start, then export the results.

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Input parameters

Field	Type	Description
searchType	string	r cases+documents (RECAP), d dockets metadata, o opinions/case law, rd filing documents, p judges, oa oral arguments.
query	string	Keywords, party/company, case name, citation. Empty = browse by filters.
court	string	Court ID, e.g. casd, nysd, cand, scotus. Optional.
dateFiledAfter	string	Only records filed on/after YYYY-MM-DD.
dateFiledBefore	string	Only records filed on/before YYYY-MM-DD.
order	string	Sort: newest first, oldest first, best match, recently argued.
startUrls	array	Advanced: paste search URLs or raw API URLs. Overrides the builder.
maxItems	integer	Max records. 0 = no limit. Default 100.
courtListenerToken	string (secret)	Optional API token to raise rate limits — recommended for large runs. The actor also works without it for small runs.
proxyConfiguration	object	Proxy settings. Default: Apify Proxy on.
maxConcurrency	integer	Keep low (1–2) for the most reliable runs. Default 1.

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Input examples

1) Federal cases mentioning a company, newest first

{
  "searchType": "r",
  "query": "Apple",
  "order": "dateFiled desc",
  "maxItems": 200
}

2) Recent cases in one court within a date range

{
  "searchType": "d",
  "court": "nysd",
  "dateFiledAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "dateFiledBefore": "2026-06-01",
  "maxItems": 500
}

3) Court opinions / case law on a topic

{
  "searchType": "o",
  "query": "copyright fair use",
  "order": "score desc",
  "maxItems": 100
}

4) Large run with a token (higher rate limits)

{
  "searchType": "r",
  "query": "patent infringement",
  "courtListenerToken": "your-token",
  "maxItems": 5000
}

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Output — data fields

Each record is one dataset row. Core fields:

Field	Description
recordType	The search type (r, d, o, …)
caseName	Case name
court	Court name
courtId	Court ID (e.g. casd)
docketNumber	Docket number
docketId	Internal docket ID
pacerCaseId	PACER case ID
dateFiled	Filing date
dateTerminated	Termination date
dateArgued	Argument date (where applicable)
assignedTo	Assigned judge
referredTo	Referred-to (magistrate) judge
suitNature	Nature of suit
cause	Cause of action
jurisdictionType	Jurisdiction type
juryDemand	Jury demand
parties	Array of party names
attorneys	Array of attorney names
firms	Array of law-firm names
documentCount	Number of documents attached
documents	Array of documents (see below)
courtListenerUrl	Link to the full record online
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp

Each entry in documents[]:

Field	Description
documentNumber	Filing number
attachmentNumber	Attachment number (if any)
shortDescription / description	Document description
documentType	Document type
pageCount	Number of pages
isAvailable	Whether the PDF is available
pacerDocId	PACER document ID
entryNumber / entryDateFiled	Docket-entry number & date
pdfUrl	Direct PDF link (when available)
url	Link to the document online

For opinions (searchType: "o") you also get caseNameFull, judge, citation, neutralCite, lexisCite, citeCount, status, posture, clusterId.

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Sample output record

{
  "recordType": "r",
  "caseName": "Portus Singapore PTE Ltd v. Savant Systems, Inc.",
  "court": "District Court, S.D. New York",
  "courtId": "nysd",
  "docketNumber": "1:26-cv-04691",
  "docketId": 73437175,
  "pacerCaseId": "...",
  "dateFiled": "2026-06-03",
  "dateTerminated": null,
  "assignedTo": null,
  "suitNature": "830 Patent",
  "cause": "35:271 Patent Infringement",
  "jurisdictionType": "Federal Question",
  "parties": ["Portus Singapore PTE Ltd", "Savant Systems, Inc."],
  "attorneys": [],
  "firms": [],
  "documentCount": 2,
  "documents": [
    {
      "documentNumber": 1,
      "shortDescription": "Exhibit D",
      "description": "COMPLAINT ...",
      "documentType": "PACER Document",
      "pageCount": 12,
      "isAvailable": true,
      "pacerDocId": "...",
      "entryNumber": 1,
      "entryDateFiled": "2026-06-03",
      "pdfUrl": "https://.../document.pdf",
      "url": "https://.../docket/73437175/1/..."
    }
  ],
  "courtListenerUrl": "https://.../docket/73437175/...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-04T12:00:00.000Z"
}

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Rate limits & large runs

For small runs the actor works out of the box. For larger runs, paste an API token to raise your rate limits and avoid throttling, and keep concurrency low (1–2) so the actor paces itself reliably. To pull very large volumes, split the job by court or month.

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Tips & best practices

• 🔑 Add a token for any run over a few hundred items — it prevents throttling.
• 🧪 Start with maxItems: 50 to confirm your query and filters.
• 🎯 Use court + date filters to keep result sets focused and relevant.
• 🧱 Split very large jobs by court or month.
• 🐢 Keep concurrency at 1–2 for the most reliable runs.
• 💾 Use the Apify API / integrations to push results into Google Sheets, a database, or a webhook, and schedule runs to monitor new filings.

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Frequently asked questions

Do I need a PACER account? No. This actor gets you federal court records without a PACER account.

Will I be charged PACER's per-page fees? No.

Do I need a token? No for small runs. For large runs a token is recommended — it raises your rate limits.

Is every document available? Document PDFs are available where they've been archived; the isAvailable field tells you per document. Case metadata (dockets, parties, entries) is broadly available even when a PDF isn't.

Can I monitor new filings? Yes — schedule the actor (e.g. daily) with a query/court filter and export new records to a webhook or sheet.

What export formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML table, RSS — plus the Apify API and integrations.

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Changelog

0.1.0

• Initial release: search RECAP dockets, dockets metadata, opinions, filing documents, judges and oral arguments.
• Cursor pagination, optional API token for higher rate limits, court/date filters.
• Clean normalized schema with nested documents (descriptions, page counts, PDF links), parties, attorneys and firms.