⚖️ CourtListener RSS Scraper

🚀 Export new court opinions in seconds. Federal and state court opinions via the CourtListener.com RSS feeds.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-25 · 📊 9 fields per record · 3,358+ courts · Full US coverage

CourtListener.com (Free Law Project) publishes RSS feeds for every US federal and state court. This scraper pulls those feeds and returns structured records: title, court, publication date, summary, PDF URL, and category.

Coverage includes the US Supreme Court (scotus), the 13 federal Courts of Appeals (ca1-ca11, cadc, cafc), every federal district court (nysd, cacd, etc.), and most state appellate courts. Pass one or more court IDs to monitor.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Law firms, legal researchers, journalists, paralegals, OSINT, academics	Monitoring new opinions, building case-law datasets, daily court-watch alerts, citation analysis

📋 What the CourtListener RSS Scraper does

• Pulls Atom feeds for any CourtListener court ID
• Extracts title, link, published date, summary, PDF URL, and category
• Combines multiple court IDs in a single run
• Returns structured records ready for export

💡 Why it matters: New opinions drop without notice. A daily run keeps your firm or beat current.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
courtIds	array	CourtListener court IDs (e.g. scotus, ca9, nysd)
maxItems	integer	Free=10, paid up to 1M

Example A. Supreme Court only:

{ "courtIds": ["scotus"], "maxItems": 25 }

Example B. Three circuit courts:

{ "courtIds": ["ca2", "ca9", "cadc"], "maxItems": 100 }

⚠️ Good to Know: RSS feeds typically include the latest 25-50 entries per court. For deep history, use CourtListener's REST API with an account.

📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
📌 title	string	Case caption
🔗 url	string	CourtListener opinion URL
🆔 courtId	string	Court ID requested
🏛️ court	string	Court name
📅 publishedDate	string	Publication date
📝 summary	string	Opinion summary (HTML stripped)
📕 pdfUrl	string	Direct PDF link
📑 category	string	Published / Unpublished
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp

Sample record:

{
  "title": "M & K Employee Solutions, Inc. v. Trustees of IAM Nat. Pension",
  "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10862762/...",
  "courtId": "scotus",
  "court": "Supreme Court of the United States",
  "publishedDate": "2026-05-21",
  "category": "Published"
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

• ⚖️ Backed by Free Law Project / CourtListener
• 🌐 3,358+ courts covered
• 📦 Export CSV, Excel, JSON, XML
• 🔄 Schedule daily court-watch

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Result
PACER manual checks	Expensive, slow
Westlaw / Lexis alerts	Pricey subscriptions
Manual RSS reading	One court at a time
This Actor	Structured multi-court export

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 credit
2. Open this Actor
3. Set court IDs and maxItems
4. Click Start
5. Download CSV, Excel, JSON, XML

💼 Business use cases

Law firms: monitor opinions in target circuits. Legal media: daily court coverage. Academic: build case-law datasets. Compliance: track regulatory court decisions.

🔌 Automating CourtListener RSS Scraper

Connect to Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub Actions, Google Drive.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Research: empirical legal scholarship. Personal: track your local court. Non-profit: civil rights litigation tracking. Experimentation: train legal LLMs.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Paste this README into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Copilot.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: 🆔 Where do I find court IDs? A: courtlistener.com/api/jurisdictions/ Q: 📅 How fresh? A: Same-day publication via RSS. Q: 📦 Formats? A: CSV, Excel, JSON, XML. Q: 🏛️ State courts? A: Yes, most appellate state courts. Q: 📕 PDF included? A: Direct PDF URL is included. Q: 💰 Cost? A: Free=10, paid up to 1M. Q: ⏰ Scheduling? A: Yes, daily/hourly via Apify. Q: 🔍 Search opinions? A: Use multiple court IDs and filter downstream. Q: 🆓 Free Law Project? A: Yes, CourtListener is run by FLP, a non-profit. Q: ⚖️ PACER? A: This uses CourtListener's free RSS, not PACER directly.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub Actions, Google Drive, Google Sheets, BigQuery, S3, webhooks, REST API.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: Independent tool, not affiliated with CourtListener or the Free Law Project. Only publicly available data is collected.