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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
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free.law
Y’all know we have a tool for finding exactly these kinds of bad redactions, right? free.law/open-source-...
December 23, 2025 at 5:12 AM
free.law
And today the @washingtonpost.com is out with another investigative piece the builds on our data. This is how you fight misinformation. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
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." A screenshot. "One third of Trump’s executive orders have been explicitly challenged in court as of Dec. 12, a Washington Post analysis of data from nonprofits CourtListener and JustSecurity found."
December 17, 2025 at 6:26 PM
free.law
We’re proud this year to become a major source for many investigative journalists. Today’s example is a six-byline article in the NYT that references FLP as a major source.

Data ➡️ Information ➡️ Reporting ➡️ Knowledge ➡️ Change. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/u...
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.
December 14, 2025 at 3:14 PM
free.law
Today is GivingTuesday!
If CourtListener or Free Law Project has helped you research, track a case, or build something awesome — today’s the day to give back.
Give back & share your story in a single step.
donate.free.law/forms/giving...

Your support keeps the law free, open & accessible
Thank you
December 2, 2025 at 10:01 PM
free.law
Today we and other legal technology providers¹ filed² an amicus brief in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence.

It's simple: Headnotes cannot be copyrighted and ROSS's use was fair. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

—
¹˒ ² See below for these excellent orgs and those that helped!
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. Another screenshot: But even if headnotes like those in Westlaw’s platform were copyrightable, the district court erred in concluding on summary judgment that Appellant ROSS Intelligence’s indirect use of those headnotes as inputs to train a new artificial intelligence (AI) legal research tool was not fair use. Instead, a correct application 2of the four fair use factors should have concluded that ROSS’s use was highly transformative and would not serve as a market substitute for headnotes. A third: The district court came to that conclusion after analogizing the headnote author’s editorial judgment “to that of a sculptor.” D.E. 770 at 7. The court’s logic is: just as a sculptor takes an uncopyrightable block of marble and creates copyrightable expression by choosing what to cut away and what to leave in place, Appellees’ Westlaw creates protectable expression by taking a court opinion and “identifying which words matter and chiseling away the surrounding mass.” Id. The sculpture analogy, however, crumbles upon closer inspection. Its most fundamental flaw is the notion that a court opinion is somehow equivalent to an untouched, blank block of marble. Not so. The more accurate analogy is that a judicial opinion is the final product of a judge taking a block of marble and carefully, skillfully chiseling away the surrounding mass to create a host of precise details, each of which reveal a specific point of law or fact. The resulting opinion looks nothing like the initial block of marble; it is instead a highly sculpted work made up entirely of many discrete bits of expressive (but uncopyrightable) content that are very directly tailored to the specific case.2
September 29, 2025 at 10:30 PM
free.law
This work was made possible by @arnoldventures.bsky.social.

We looked into semantic search, AI summarization, categorization, automated metadata extraction, how to build a AI citator and more.
A screenshot from the blog post listing the experiments we ran.
September 25, 2025 at 4:26 PM
free.law
This is your quarterly reminder to use your free $30 PACER credits if you haven't already. Here's a list of the top documents people want: www.courtlistener.com/prayers/top/
A graphic that says: Most Wanted PACER Documents Don't forget to use your credits This is your quarterly reminder to check your PACER balance, and purchase documents for others."
September 24, 2025 at 4:32 PM
free.law
We’re finalists in the AI category of the American Legal Tech Awards!
For the past year we worked to prove that AI can help make important legal documents easier to find, understand & use. github.com/freelawproje...

Open source. Public data. Justice-focused.

🏆 More: americanlegaltechnology.com
September 17, 2025 at 1:22 PM
free.law
We’re hiring at Free Law Project!

2x Open Data Backend Developers
1x Litigant Portal Developer

Join us to build open-source tools that power transparency + access to justice.

Remote | Impact-driven | Open-source
Apply: free.law/hiring

#Hiring #LegalTech #TechForGood
September 10, 2025 at 8:12 PM
free.law
PACER and CM/ECF aren’t just tools—they’re essential infrastructure relied on by attorneys, journalists, and the public.

The way to fix this is to pass the Open Courts Act, a bill we've worked on with others for many years. It calls for a modern and secure system. We can't wait anymore.
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.
September 3, 2025 at 10:46 PM
free.law
Yesterday @wyden.senate.gov wrote a blistering letter to Chief Justice Roberts demanding action about the most recent PACER hack. It's worth a read. One thing that stands out is that the judiciary never notified the people harmed by the last hack in 2020. www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/do...
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!
August 26, 2025 at 4:13 PM
free.law
We're redesigning CourtListener and the new homepage has some new stats. (This isn't live yet!)

Yowza!
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
August 14, 2025 at 10:18 PM
free.law
The quality is actually quite good. There are mistakes, but when spot checking we found it to be on par with humans and sometimes better (Latin phrases, for example). But, yes, there is a prominent warning to verify by listening, just as you would do if transcribed by a human.
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!”
August 1, 2025 at 2:24 PM
free.law
AI in the legal space can be complicated, but we are proud to partner with OpenAI on this project. As the leader of the National Association of the Deaf says, the ability to search, read, and monitor court recordings is "a significant advancement in accessibility."
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.
July 31, 2025 at 3:42 PM
free.law
We just launched version 4.2 of our API. It's a fix and a new feature to make it faster. Go forth and innovate! www.courtlistener.com/help/api/res...
A screenshot of the REST API Change Log. Click the link in the post for the full version.
July 31, 2025 at 12:00 AM
free.law
News! CourtListener now lets you keep up with everything that's happening in PACER. Save a query to CourtListener, and we'll tell you when there are new results.

RECAP Search Alerts are finally live!

Follow people, organizations, topics, and anything else you can imagine. Learn how below: 👇
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.)
June 18, 2025 at 3:23 PM
free.law
We're about to have transcripts on CourtListener for over 3.2 million minutes of oral argument recordings. Fully searchable. Read along as you listen. This has been on the to-do list since 2016 and advances in AI finally made it possible. If you want in the beta, drop a DM!
June 3, 2025 at 9:49 PM
free.law
Last week, along with @fixthecourt.com, we sent a letter to Senators Grassley and Durbin, asking that the Senate Judiciary Committee make judicial conflict of interest information available during and after the upcoming judicial nominations. Read our letter here: fixthecourt.com/wp-content/u...
A screenshot of the letter. Use the PDF to read it. A second screenshot of the one-page letter.
May 22, 2025 at 8:25 PM
free.law
Are you a journalist that works with PACER? Make a list of PACER documents you want, *and share it* with your followers so they can help you buy documents. A new toggle makes your list of prayers public. Gif below. Details here: www.courtlistener.com/help/pray-an...
April 17, 2025 at 4:28 AM
free.law
At #LITCon2025, Free Law Project's Jessica Frank & Rachel Gao shared insights on enhancing justice through open-source collaborations and AI in legal research. Discover how these innovations are shaping the future of legal tech.
Thank you @suffolklitlab.org for hosting!!
free.law/2025/04/10/l...
April 10, 2025 at 7:02 PM
free.law
Vote for our #SOCAP25 session
Leveraging Technology to Access the Hidden Justice Market & Improve Economic Mobility
Millions face court alone—evictions, debt, custody. Can tech bridge the #justice gap? Explore solutions that empower litigants & modernize courts. #A2J
socapglobal.com/session-idea...
April 2, 2025 at 5:58 PM
free.law
Vote for our #SOCAP25 session!
Rethinking Capital: How a Nonprofit Can Provide the Fuel for Tech Breakthroughs
#LegalTech needs funding before VC kicks in. What if nonprofits filled the gap? Join us to explore #CatalyticCapital, the game-changer for legal innovation.
socapglobal.com/session-idea...
April 2, 2025 at 5:54 PM
free.law
If you're a @kagi.com or DuckDuckGo user, you can use "bangs" to search CourtListener. Just add "!recap" to search RECAP or "!courtlistener" to search case law. (Unfortunately @craignewmark.bsky.social beat us to !cl...). Here's a video showing and some docs explaining: help.kagi.com/kagi/feature...
March 27, 2025 at 11:58 PM
free.law
We also have case law analysis, including a table of authorities, a searchable list of the citations *to* the case, a collection of semantically similar cases, and summaries of the case found in other cases, so you can get a quick overview of it!
March 27, 2025 at 8:04 PM
free.law
Or here's another really great new feature. You can see scans of the case law books going back over 250 years. Here's an example showing 1 U.S. 2, the oldest SCOTUS case we have. This comes from the great Harvard Law Library scanning project, which we've integrated:
March 25, 2025 at 6:08 PM