⚖️ CourtListener Scraper: US Case Law, Opinions & Dockets

Part of the Company Diligence MCP. This actor's data is also available to AI agents through our Company Diligence MCP server — ten official-registry tools behind one endpoint. No result, no charge.

⚡ Part of a 69-scraper suite trusted by 450+ developers across 8,000+ runs · >99% run success · no login, no cookies, no ban risk.

💸 You're only charged for delivered results. Empty searches, failed pages and duplicate listings are never billed.

Overview

CourtListener Scraper pulls US federal and state court opinions, case law, and RECAP dockets from CourtListener, the largest free legal database in the country. Search by keywords or a quoted phrase, restrict to a specific court (SCOTUS, Ninth Circuit, District of Delaware), and filter by filing date range. Get back structured JSON with case name, court, judge, citations, docket number, and filing date. No API key required, though a free token raises the rate limit.

It's the fastest way to build a legal research pipeline, monitor filings on a topic, feed a RAG system with primary law, or run a docket-watch on a specific court.

Reliability posture: blocked, empty, or failed runs are never charged. You only pay for an opinion or docket record that was actually delivered.

✅ No API key required | ✅ Opinions + dockets | ✅ Court + date filters | ✅ MCP-ready for AI agents

Features

Case law & dockets. Choose between opinions (case law) and RECAP dockets (federal case filings). Full-text search. Quoted phrases and free text across case content. Court filter. Restrict to a court by CourtListener slug (scotus, ca9, ded). Date range. Filter by filed-on-or-after and filed-on-or-before. Optional token. Free CourtListener token raises rate limits for heavier runs.

How it works

The actor calls the CourtListener public REST API for either the opinions endpoint (case law) or the dockets endpoint (RECAP federal filings). Your search query is submitted as a full-text term, and optional filters (court, date-from, date-to) are appended to the request. Results are paginated up to your maxResults budget and normalised to a flat schema.

Runs work without any credentials against CourtListener's keyless endpoint. Supplying a free CourtListener API token in the apiToken field lifts the rate limit and is recommended for large-volume research.

🧾 Input configuration

{
  "query": "patent infringement",
  "resultType": "opinions",
  "court": "ca9",
  "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2026-06-30",
  "maxResults": 100
}

📤 Output format

Captured from a live run against CourtListener (query patent infringement, court ca9):

{
  "case_name": "Cpc Patent Technologies Pty Ltd. v. Apple Inc.",
  "case_name_full": "",
  "court": "Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit",
  "court_id": "ca9",
  "date_filed": "2024-10-24",
  "date_argued": "2024-09-24",
  "docket_number": "23-3449",
  "judge": "",
  "citations": ["119 F.4th 1126"],
  "cite_count": 3,
  "status": "Published",
  "nature_of_suit": "",
  "cluster_id": 10160745,
  "docket_id": 69032034,
  "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10160745/cpc-patent-technologies-pty-ltd-v-apple-inc/",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-15T04:14:18.606Z"
}

Every record contains these fields:

Field	Description
📛 case_name	Short case name (e.g. Smith v. Jones)
📄 case_name_full	Full official case name, blank when CourtListener has none on file
🏛️ court	Court name
🆔 court_id	CourtListener court slug
📅 date_filed	Filing date (YYYY-MM-DD)
🗣️ date_argued	Oral argument date if applicable
🔢 docket_number	Court docket number
👨‍⚖️ judge	Presiding judge if published, blank when not recorded
📚 citations	Array of reporter citations
🔗 cite_count	Number of times this opinion has been cited by later opinions
✅ status	Precedential status (e.g. Published)
⚖️ nature_of_suit	Nature of suit if classified, blank when not set
🆔 cluster_id	CourtListener opinion cluster ID
🆔 docket_id	CourtListener docket ID
🔗 url	CourtListener opinion URL
🕒 scraped_at	ISO timestamp of when the record was captured

💼 Common use cases

Legal research & monitoring Pull every recent Ninth Circuit opinion on a topic and read them side by side. Set up a daily job that alerts on new filings mentioning your client or industry.

RAG & AI legal tools Feed primary case law into a retrieval-augmented generation pipeline for a legal assistant. Build a searchable in-house corpus of opinions for your practice area.

Docket watch Monitor RECAP dockets in a specific district court for filings involving a party or topic. Track how a case moves through the docket without paying PACER per view.

Compliance & competitive intel Follow patent, antitrust, or securities filings in categories that touch your business. Spot legal risk trends before they hit the news.

🚀 Getting started

1. Open the actor and enter a query (words or a quoted phrase).
2. Pick resultType: opinions (case law) or dockets (RECAP filings).
3. Optionally restrict by court slug and dateFrom / dateTo.
4. Set maxResults to control cost.
5. Optionally paste a free CourtListener token in apiToken for higher rate limits.
6. Click Start. Download as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull via API or MCP.

FAQ

Do I need an API token? No. The actor works keyless against CourtListener's public endpoints. A free token from CourtListener raises the rate limit and is worth adding for larger runs.

What's the difference between opinions and dockets? Opinions are the published legal decisions (case law). RECAP dockets are federal court case filings pulled from PACER via the RECAP project: motions, orders, and other case-level events.

How much does it cost? Pay per record returned, pay as you go. No subscription, no monthly minimum.

Can I use it in an AI agent? Yes. It's exposed as an MCP tool. See below.

Use in Claude, ChatGPT & any MCP agent

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/courtlistener-court-records

Or call it programmatically with the Apify client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('themineworks/courtlistener-court-records').call({
  query: 'patent infringement',
  resultType: 'opinions',
  court: 'ca9',
  maxResults: 25,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

🛠️ Complete your legal & compliance pipeline

Got the case law. Now widen the picture:

• FDA Recalls Scraper: pull drug, device, and food enforcement actions.
• FDA 510(k) Scraper: pull medical device clearances for regulatory context.
• Crossref Scholarly Metadata: pull academic literature that cites or informs the topic.

Typical flow: courtlistener finds the case law, fda-recalls surfaces the enforcement, crossref adds the academic backing.

Questions or need a custom field set? Reach out through the Apify profile.