Search federal litigation dockets (CourtListener RECAP/PACER) API

Search the CourtListener RECAP archive of federal PACER dockets, normalized with court, docket number, assigned judge, nature-of-suit, filed/terminated dates and attorney count, plus index-wide totals. Answers 'What antitrust cases are on file?', 'Which judge is assigned and how many attorneys appear?'.

Price$0.01per request

MethodPOST

Route/v1/gov/courtlistener-docket-search

StatusLive

MIME typeapplication/json

Rate limit60/minute

Cache3600s public

govlegalcourtsdocketslitigationpacerrecapcourtlistenerus

API URLhttps://x402.hexl.dev/v1/gov/courtlistener-docket-search

Integration docs

Example request

{
  "query": "antitrust",
  "limit": 3
}

Example response

{
  "query": "antitrust",
  "totalDockets": 143777,
  "totalDocumentsIndexed": 1563097,
  "returned": 3,
  "dockets": [
    {
      "caseName": "Skelaxin (Metaxalone) Antitrust Litigation",
      "court": "District Court, E.D. Tennessee",
      "courtId": "tned",
      "docketNumber": "1:12-md-02343",
      "dateFiled": "2012-05-17",
      "dateTerminated": "2017-08-01",
      "assignedTo": "Curtis Lynn Collier",
      "attorneyCount": 119,
      "natureOfSuit": "410 Anti-Trust",
      "docketId": 4382641,
      "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4382641/skelaxin-metaxalone-antitrust-litigation/"
    },
    {
      "caseName": "IRS Antitrust MDL v. IRS Antitrust MDL",
      "court": "District Court, S.D. New York",
      "courtId": "nysd",
      "docketNumber": "1:16-mc-02704",
      "dateFiled": "2016-06-13",
      "dateTerminated": null,
      "assignedTo": "James Paul Oetken",
      "attorneyCount": 4,
      "natureOfSuit": null,
      "docketId": 5578727,
      "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/5578727/irs-antitrust-mdl-v-irs-antitrust-mdl/"
    }
  ],
  "disclaimer": "Informational data product aggregated from public government / open-legal APIs. NOT legal advice. Verify against the official primary source before relying on it."
}

Input schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "query"
  ],
  "properties": {
    "query": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Party/case search phrase"
    },
    "court": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Optional court id filter"
    },
    "limit": {
      "type": "integer",
      "minimum": 1,
      "maximum": 25,
      "default": 10
    }
  }
}

Output schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "additionalProperties": true
}