Free Law Project to Add Millions of Recent Case Decisions to CourtListener
Free Law Project will digitize and add millions of post-2018 case opinions to CourtListener.
Why it matters: The digital expansion boosts public access to up-to-date legal decisions and advances legal research capabilities—crucial for legal tech users, attorneys, and law libraries relying on comprehensive and current case law.
- The initiative covers millions of pages of case opinions issued since 2018.
- CourtListener, part of Free Law Project, already hosts over 10 million legal opinions.
- The RECAP Archive supports research with hundreds of millions of docket entries and federal court documents.
- A 2022 partnership with vLex aims for a complete federal and state appellate case law database.
Free Law Project has announced a major digitization effort that will add millions of pages of recent case opinions—spanning from 2018 onward—to its CourtListener platform. The move is expected to significantly expand online access to updated legal decisions for attorneys, researchers, and the public.
- The newly digitized opinions will join CourtListener's existing collection, which already comprises over 10 million opinions sourced from hundreds of American jurisdictions.
- CourtListener is recognized for hosting one of the largest online collections of American legal jurisprudence, and its RECAP Archive includes hundreds of millions of docket entries and millions of federal court documents, growing daily.
- The initiative is the latest step in Free Law Project's founding mission to make primary legal materials more accessible in the United States. "We aim to finish collecting every precedential legal decision from both the federal courts and the state appellate courts," said executive director Michael Lissner.
- In 2022, Free Law Project formed a partnership with vLex, a legal research company, to build a comprehensive case law database. Masoud Gerami, vLex Managing Director, added, "We are proud to be using our technology and knowledge of data to make legal information more accessible in the United States."
- Data from Free Law Project has been instrumental in high-profile projects such as ProPublica's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on Supreme Court justices' financial conflicts.
By filling in gaps from the past several years, this project addresses a persistent challenge in legal research: access to the most current appellate and Supreme Court decisions. The expanded archives are expected to be a valuable resource for law libraries, academics, journalists, and the broader legal tech industry.
By the numbers:
- 10 million+ — CourtListener's current hosted opinions
- Hundreds of millions — Docket entries and documents in RECAP Archive
Yes, but: Details on the project timeline and funding partners have not been disclosed.
What's next: No timeline for project completion has been announced.