Free Law Project ⚖

@free.law

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We are the non-profit host of RECAP, CourtListener, and the Big Cases bots. We use technology and advocacy to make the legal sector better. https://free.law | https://free.law/recap/ | https://courtlistener.com | https://bots.law

“Bringing FOIA to the federal judiciary aligns it with the executive branch and numerous state judiciaries that are already subject to Sunlight laws. The federal judiciary was appropriated north of nine billion dollars for 2026 and American taxpayers deserve to know how that money is being spent. Faith in the rule of law is a founding tenet of our democracy that is strengthened by the transparency this bill brings,” said Michael Lissner, Executive Director Free Law Project.
A post that begins: "Three thousand people have signed up for our MCP since launch yesterday..."
A screenshot of our homepage. It shows a big search bar. On the left is a toggle where you can flip between & or ?. There's a tooltip that reads: "Try Semantic Search." Click the to toggle between & keyword and ? semantic search. Learn more."
In addition to leveraging that data, Descrybe also has a commercial license with the Free Law Project, a nonprofit that provides access to its own developed primary law database. Von Zastrow told Law.com that parts of the historical data in Midpage’s platform came from Free Law Project as well.
As government and private sector IT systems come under increasing attack by sophisticated cyber criminals, two federal judges outlined a plan before the Judicial Conference of the United States to accelerate the Judiciary’s development of a new more secure case management system. Addressing the Conference on Tuesday, Appellate Judge Michael Y. Scudder, who chairs the Conference’s Information Technology Committee, and District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, chairman of the Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, said that development of a replacement for the federal Judiciary’s aging system is on a fast track, with initial components being tested this year at six courts around the country. “This project is a top priority for our branch,” Judge Van Tatenhove said. “It is one we are accelerating to meet our security and operational needs. We must do this given the acute and persistent risk faced by our current CM/ECF system. The new system will replace the Case Management/Electronic Case Files system (CM/ECF) that the courts have relied on for nearly three decades to manage heavy caseloads and carry out court operations. It is used by litigants to file cases and related documents, and it provides the public with access to over 1 billion court records. It is anticipated that the district courts will be the first to start implementing aspects of the new case management system within the next year, followed by appellate and bankruptcy courts. The timeline for completion is two to three years sooner than originally expected.
A video showing a bad redaction being exposed.
A chart. The top says, "Trump's orders targeting opponents and immigration are among his most challenged in court" and the bottom says "Source: Post analysis of JustSecurity and CourtListener data."
Reporters reviewed all news releases and litigation releases issued by the S.E.C. since Jan. 20, 2017, the beginning of the first Trump administration. They also searched CourtListener, a database maintained by the nonprofit Free Law Project, for cases not announced in those releases. In addition, The Times examined enforcement actions brought through the agency's administrative proceedings, which are cases overseen by its own administrative law judges.
A screenshot from the summary of the argument in the PDF: “[N]o one can own the law. ‘Every citizen is presumed to know the law,’ and ‘it needs no argument to show . . . that all should have free access’ to its contents.” Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255, 265, (2020) (citation omitted). So too for judicial opinions. Id. (“[Judges] cannot be the ‘author[s]’ of the works they prepare ‘in the discharge of their judicial duties.’”). The same should be true of the headnotes at issue in this case, which serve a discrete and limited purpose as often near-verbatim summaries and verbatim quotes that faithfully and accurately describe a specific point of law from a judicial opinion. Individual headnotes are uncopyrightable because they lack the originality required for copyright protection, and the district court erred in finding to the contrary. And, because there are no or only a few other ways to concisely and precisely express the specific individual legal points stated in an opinion, the expression in a headnote cannot be distinguished from the underlying legal idea it aims to convey. The district court therefore also erred by rejecting the merger defense.
A screenshot from the blog post listing the experiments we ran.
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The potential for security breaches has been a longstanding concern. In 2017, Michael Lissner, the head of the nonprofit Free Law Project, which seeks to make court data more accessible to the public, discovered what he called a flaw in the system. Cookies, used to track users between browsing sessions, could potentially be used surreptitiously by administrators of other websites to access accounts or even to file documents, according to Mr. Lissner. “It was a minor bug and a severe vulnerability,” he said, adding that it took the judiciary almost six months to fix the flaw.
A screenshot from the letter: "The judiciary’s complete failure to address its cybersecurity problems after the 2020 breach, as well as the subsequent coverup and stonewalling of congressional oversight, makes it clear that the judiciary and its policymaking arm, the Judicial Conference, are ill-equipped to diagnose and address their own problems. An independent, public, expert review is essential not only because of repeated hacks, but also because of the judiciary’s subsequent lack of transparency. For example, the judiciary still hasn't notified victims whose information was stolen in 2020. Such a review is needed to rebuild the trust of litigators, parties, Congress and the public." But the whole letter is worth reading!
A screenshot showing: - 10.8M decisions in CL - 69.6M federal cases in RECAP - 3.3M minutes of oral argument audio - 2.1M searches completed in the last ten days - 160k emails sent in the last ten days - 138k API calls in the last ten days
The Oprah “You get a car” meme, except she’s giving out quotes. The block lettering says, “You get a quote! And you get a quote!”
A screenshot from the blog post that says: We are proud that this feature enhances accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing community, which includes hundreds of lawyers. The Interim Chief Executive Officer at the National Association of the Deaf, Bobbie Beth Scoggins, Ed.D., had this to say: > The release of transcripts for oral arguments on CourtListener represents a significant advancement in accessibility. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing community deserves the opportunity to understand and participate in legal discussions fully. We’re grateful for Free Law Project’s efforts to make this critical resource available to all.
A screenshot of the REST API Change Log. Click the link in the post for the full version.
A picture showing how to make an alert: 1. Do a search in the RECAP Archive 2. Click the bell icon in the query bar. 3. A modal pops up where you can edit the details for the alert (give it a name, set the timing, etc.)
A video of somebody using the new feature. It shows an audio player that's playing the oral argument recording. As it plays, there's a transcript below that ticks along highlighting the text. The user clicks around between the player and the text and they update each other.
A screenshot of the letter. Use the PDF to read it.
A gif showing a search in Kagi for "Slaughter v. Trump" which shows New York Times and some news articles. Then a search for "Slaughter v. Trump !recap", which shows it in the RECAP Archive.
Screenshot of the new homepage
A screenshot of the profile page showing some prayers for documents and the statement that "11 prayers granted totaling $3.70 (2 today)"
An email. Subject: "A document you requested is now on CourtListener" Body headline: "Your Wish Has Been Granted!" The remainder of the email then shows the details of the filing, including the name of the case, a link to the document, and closes with, "You requested it on March 3, 2025. 1 person was waiting for it. Somebody paid $0.20 to make it available to all of us."
A chart showing our PDF downloads for the past three months. The X axis is omitted because the chart generator is wonky, but the trend is up and to the right!
Using novel data on financial disclosures of judges and the civil case information of public firms across district courts in the United States between 2000 and 2021, we document multiple instances in which judges fail to recuse themselves in cases where they hold common stock. We find robust evidence that judges appear to rule more favorably and take longer when deciding over conflicted cases than when deciding over unconflicted ones. We also find that investors are positively surprised by these outcomes, as reflected by stock returns to case outcomes. Collectively, our results provide the first large-scale evidence of the relation between judges’ financial holdings and case outcomes.
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A screenshot of the change log. Click the link to read properly.
A screenshot of an email showing "Your real time RECAP alert […] had 1 hit" and then showing a hit in Chamber of Commerce v. CFPB (5th Cir.)
A screenshot showing an interface for creating a real-time alert for any new citation to CFPB v. Community Financial
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Another screenshot: "Michael, you submitted an appeal," blah, blah.
A screenshot: "We suspect automated behavior on your account," blah, blah, blah.
A screenshot showing: "Documents: 506,237,281"
A chart showing a dramatic rise in downloads on the far right.
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A screenshot showing our policies going back to February 2011.
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A screenshot of our notifications showing a couple hundred new followers.