LegalHarvest — All-in-One U.S. Legal Research

What LegalHarvest Does

LegalHarvest is a multi-source U.S. legal research API packaged as an Apify Actor. It searches public legal, regulatory, corporate, and federal spending sources from one normalized input and returns structured JSON that is ready for Apify datasets, API workflows, AI agents, and MCP-style tool use.

Use it when you want one lightweight actor for legal research discovery instead of wiring together separate calls to CourtListener, GovInfo, Congress.gov, Federal Register, eCFR, SEC EDGAR, USAspending, Open States, U.S. Code lookups, Oregon Revised Statutes lookups, and the new search-backed multi-state statute lookup layer.

Update

April 17, 2026: LegalHarvest now ships a new state_statutes source for non-Oregon state statute discovery. Oregon ORS remains the official direct adapter, while the new multi-state layer adds search-backed public-code lookup for citation-style queries such as California Penal Code 187 and Texas Penal Code 19.02. Exact section citations now use official California and Texas statute backends when possible. This is the first 50-state foundation release, and broader state-by-state quality work is still in progress.

State coverage note: Oregon Revised Statutes remains the direct official state-statute adapter. LegalHarvest now also includes official exact-section adapters for California and Texas, plus a search-backed public state-statute lookup foundation for other non-Oregon states. More official state adapters are planned ASAP. State bill searches are available through Open States when a jurisdiction is supplied and Open States quota is available.

LegalHarvest is best for fast public-record discovery, citation lookups, compliance research, legislative monitoring, investigative research, and RAG/AI data collection. It is not legal advice, a citator, PACER access, Google Scholar access, or a paid proprietary legal database. Always verify important results against the linked official source.

Features

• Search across case law, dockets, federal legislation, federal statutes, Oregon state statutes, search-backed multi-state statutes, regulations, corporate filings, and federal spending from a single input.
• Auto-route exact citations such as ORS 192.431, 42 U.S.C. 1983, 45 CFR 164.512, and 119 HR 1 to the most relevant official source.
• Return normalized records with common fields like title, citation, source, jurisdiction, date, status, URL, matched terms, and optional raw payloads.
• Keep compute costs low by using HTTP-based source adapters rather than headless browsers.
• Produce Apify dataset rows and a RUN_SUMMARY key-value-store record for monitoring and automation.
• Work well with Apify API, scheduled runs, webhooks, dataset exports, and AI-agent/MCP workflows.
• Preserve CourtListener privacy signals when a result is flagged as blocked from public search-engine indexing.

Public Sources Covered

Source	Coverage	Key required?
CourtListener	Case law and docket discovery	No, token recommended for higher volume
GovInfo	U.S. Reports and official federal documents	Optional API_DATA_GOV_KEY recommended
Congress.gov	Federal bills and bill summaries	Optional API_DATA_GOV_KEY recommended
Federal Register	Rules, proposed rules, notices, and executive materials	No
eCFR	Code of Federal Regulations citation lookups	No
U.S. Code	U.S. Code citation lookups	No
Oregon Revised Statutes	Oregon state statute lookups from the official legislature source	No
California Legislative Information	Official California statute lookup for exact California code citations such as California Penal Code 187	No
Texas Constitution and Statutes	Official Texas statute lookup for exact Texas code citations such as Texas Penal Code 19.02	No
Public state-code search layer	Search-backed non-Oregon state statute lookup across indexed public code hosts such as Justia and FindLaw; best on citation-style queries	No
Open States	State bill search across Open States jurisdictions, especially with a jurisdiction filter	Yes, OPENSTATES_API_KEY or openstates_api_key
SEC EDGAR	Public company filings	No, but a descriptive User-Agent is used
USAspending.gov	Federal recipient spending search	No

Input

The main input is a search query plus an optional search mode. Leave sources empty unless you want to force a specific source adapter.

For state statutes, Oregon ORS remains the direct official adapter. California and Texas exact section citations now also use official state backends. Other non-Oregon state statute searches use the state_statutes source, which searches indexed public code hosts and works best when the query includes a state plus a code, chapter, or section citation. Use Open States for state bill and legislative searches with jurisdictions; additional official 50-state statute adapters are still planned.

{
  "query": "Brown v. Board of Education",
  "search_mode": "case_law",
  "max_results": 5
}

Useful examples:

{
  "query": "ORS 192.431",
  "search_mode": "statutes",
  "max_results": 5
}

{
  "query": "45 CFR 164.512",
  "search_mode": "regulations",
  "max_results": 5
}

{
  "query": "119 HR 1",
  "search_mode": "legislation",
  "max_results": 5
}

{
  "query": "HB 2001",
  "search_mode": "legislation",
  "jurisdictions": ["or"],
  "sources": ["openstates"],
  "max_results": 5
}

{
  "query": "Apple",
  "search_mode": "corporate",
  "max_results": 5
}

{
  "query": "Lockheed Martin",
  "search_mode": "spending",
  "max_results": 5
}

Output

LegalHarvest writes normalized records to the default dataset. A typical result looks like this:

{
  "result_type": "case_law",
  "source": "govinfo",
  "title": "Brown v. Board of Education",
  "summary": "Official U.S. Reports record for the case.",
  "citation": "347 U.S. 483",
  "court_or_body": "Supreme Court of the United States",
  "jurisdiction": "US",
  "date": "1954-05-17",
  "status": "available",
  "url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/",
  "source_id": "example-source-id",
  "query": "Brown v. Board of Education",
  "matched_terms": ["Brown", "Board", "Education"],
  "raw": null
}

The actor also stores a RUN_SUMMARY record in the default key-value store with the query, selected mode, requested sources, per-source messages, total result count, and final status message.

How To Run LegalHarvest

In Apify Console, open the actor, choose a search mode, enter a query, and click Start. Use the dataset tab for results and the key-value-store tab for RUN_SUMMARY.

From the Apify CLI:

npx apify-cli call valor-investigations/legalharvest --input '{"query":"Brown v. Board of Education","search_mode":"case_law","max_results":5}'

For API and AI-agent workflows, use the actor's Apify API endpoint or expose it through Apify's MCP integrations. The normalized input schema is designed so agents can choose a search mode, pass a legal citation or keyword query, and read structured dataset rows back as tool results.

Configuration

LegalHarvest supports bring-your-own-key inputs for quota-sensitive sources. Users can provide api_data_gov_key, courtlistener_api_token, or openstates_api_key as secret Actor inputs for a single run. If those fields are blank, the actor falls back to owner-managed environment secrets when available.

OPENSTATES_API_KEY is required only for Open States state-bill searches in self-hosted or developer deployments. The hosted Store actor can use the actor owner's configured secret, but high-volume Store users should provide their own openstates_api_key or use a higher-capacity data plan.

API_DATA_GOV_KEY is optional but recommended for developer deployments that need higher Congress.gov and GovInfo throughput because shared demo-key access can be rate-limited. Store it as an Apify secret and map it to the actor environment variable with the same name, or pass api_data_gov_key in the Actor input.

COURTLISTENER_API_TOKEN is optional but recommended for higher-volume CourtListener use. Store it as an Apify secret and map it to the actor environment variable with the same name, or pass courtlistener_api_token in the Actor input.

LEGALHARVEST_USER_AGENT is optional for local development. On Apify, the actor uses a descriptive default user agent and source-specific safe formatting.

Store And Quota Notes

For public Apify Store use, the recommended production setup is to configure owner-managed Apify secret environment variables for API_DATA_GOV_KEY, COURTLISTENER_API_TOKEN, and OPENSTATES_API_KEY, while still allowing high-volume users to bring their own per-run keys. This keeps trial runs simple, reduces shared quota pressure, and gives enterprise users a clean path to use their own source-provider agreements.

Open States is the tightest default quota surface in this actor, so state-legislation searches should encourage users to supply openstates_api_key when they expect sustained usage. Oregon, California, and Texas now have official state-statute paths; the broader state_statutes source is still a search-backed 50-state foundation, not the final form of a 50-state statute scraper. CourtListener REST API is the best match for this actor's current architecture. Bulk data, database replication, and webhooks are better handled as separate advanced pipelines, not as the default Store actor path.

Limitations And Responsible Use

LegalHarvest uses public sources and official/open endpoints where available. It does not bypass paywalls, CAPTCHAs, PACER fees, Google Scholar restrictions, proprietary databases, or access controls.

Results are discovery-oriented. Always verify important legal conclusions against the official source, current law, and qualified counsel. The actor does not determine whether a case is still good law and does not provide legal advice.

Users are responsible for using exported data lawfully, including privacy, court-record, data-brokerage, export-control, and platform terms that may apply to their use case. When CourtListener marks a result as blocked from public search-engine indexing, LegalHarvest preserves that signal in the normalized status field so users can handle it with extra care.

LegalHarvest is not affiliated with or endorsed by CourtListener, Free Law Project, GovInfo, Congress.gov, Federal Register, eCFR, SEC EDGAR, USAspending.gov, Open States, the Oregon Legislature, or any other source provider.

Good Fits

• Public legal research discovery
• Investigative journalism and public-record triage
• Compliance and due-diligence source collection
• Legislative and regulatory monitoring
• AI/RAG enrichment from public legal and government sources
• Apify schedules, webhooks, dataset exports, and MCP-style agent workflows