Robert Ambrogi Blog
Back in 2011, I wrote a post about the launch of CourtListener, a free website that lets you create alerts to notify you of new cases that match your search criteria. Today, the site announced that it is adding more than 1.5 million court opinions to its database, expanding its coverage to a total of 350 federal and state jurisdictions.
The cases were donated to CourtListener by LawBox, the company behind the LawBox legal research app for iOS devices.
Originally created by Michael Lissner as part of his master’s thesis at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information, CourtListener is now a part of the broader Free Law Project, a non-profit devoted to providing free, public and permanent access to primary legal materials on the Internet.
In an email, Lissner describes this expansion as huge for CourtListener, “blowing us past the 1M and 2M marks in one fell swoop.” In addition to being available for alerts, all of the data will be available for bulk downloads.
In addition to adding these cases, the site is making some improvements to how it handles the cases. For one, it is adding star pagination throughout its collection, making pinpoint citations possible. In addition, it has added the ability to search by name of judge. The feature is still in beta and is not comprehensive, according to CourtListener.
To create an alert in CourtListener, simply enter a search query. Once the results display, you can choose to create an alert based on the search and select how often you wish to be notified of matching results. You will have to register first to create an alert, but registration is free.
Should you wish to support the work of the Free Law Project, the site welcomes donations.