CourtListener (Independent Publisher) (Preview)

CourtListener is a free legal research platform operated by Free Law Project. This connector provides access to federal and state court opinions, dockets, PACER filings, and citation verification.

This connector is available in the following products and regions:

Service Class Regions
Copilot Studio Premium All Power Automate regions except the following:
     -   US Government (GCC)
     -   US Government (GCC High)
     -   China Cloud operated by 21Vianet
     -   US Department of Defense (DoD)
Logic Apps Standard All Logic Apps regions except the following:
     -   Azure Government regions
     -   Azure China regions
     -   US Department of Defense (DoD)
Power Apps Premium All Power Apps regions except the following:
     -   US Government (GCC)
     -   US Government (GCC High)
     -   China Cloud operated by 21Vianet
     -   US Department of Defense (DoD)
Power Automate Premium All Power Automate regions except the following:
     -   US Government (GCC)
     -   US Government (GCC High)
     -   China Cloud operated by 21Vianet
     -   US Department of Defense (DoD)
Contact
Name Dan Romano
URL https://github.com/krautrocker
Connector Metadata
Publisher krautrocker
Website https://www.courtlistener.com
Privacy policy https://free.law/privacy
Categories Business Intelligence;Data

CourtListener (Independent Publisher)

CourtListener is a free legal research platform operated by Free Law Project. It provides public access to millions of federal and state court opinions, PACER dockets, docket entries, oral argument recordings, and judge information. This connector enables Power Automate flows and Power Apps to search court dockets, retrieve docket details and filings, search case law opinions, and verify legal citations using the CourtListener REST API v4.

Publisher: Dan Romano

Stack Owner: Free Law Project

Prerequisites

To use this connector, you need:

  • A free CourtListener account at courtlistener.com
  • A CourtListener API token, available from your account profile

Obtaining Credentials

  1. Go to courtlistener.com and select Sign in / Register.
  2. Create a free account using your email address.
  3. After signing in, navigate to your profile page at courtlistener.com/profile/api-token/.
  4. Copy the token shown on that page.
  5. When creating a connection in Power Automate or Power Apps, paste your token into the API Key field using the following format: Token your_api_token. The word Token followed by a single space must be included before the token value — entering the token alone without this prefix will result in authentication errors.

Supported Operations

Operation Description
SearchDockets Search federal court dockets by case name, docket number, court, or filing date.
GetDocket Retrieve a single court docket by its CourtListener numeric ID.
GetDocketEntries List docket entries (filings) for a specific court docket, with optional filtering by date or entry number.
SearchOpinions Search case law opinions by keyword, court, judge, or date using full-text search.
GetCitation Verify one or more legal citations, or extract and verify all citations found in a block of text.

Known Issues and Limitations

  • Rate limits: The CourtListener API enforces the following rate limits for authenticated users: 5 requests per minute, 50 requests per hour, and 125 requests per day. All three limits apply concurrently, and the most restrictive limit controls whether a request is accepted. Flows that call this connector frequently should include delays between actions to stay within these limits.
  • Authentication: This connector uses API token authentication. OAuth is not supported for Independent Publisher connectors at this time.
  • RECAP Fetch: The RECAP Fetch endpoint, which retrieves documents directly from PACER on demand, is not included in this connector. Accessing PACER documents through RECAP Fetch requires a separate PACER account and incurs PACER fees. Users who need this capability should access it directly via the CourtListener website or API.
  • Pagination: All list operations return paginated results. Use the Cursor parameter with the value from the Next Page URL field in a prior response to retrieve subsequent pages.
  • Constructing full URLs: The URL Path field returned by all operations is a relative path (for example, /opinion/10863230/case-name/). To produce a clickable link, prepend https://www.courtlistener.com to this value in your flow. Opinion URLs follow the pattern https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/{id}/{case-name-slug}/.
  • Coverage: CourtListener's opinion database covers federal courts comprehensively and many state courts, but coverage varies by jurisdiction. Not all courts or time periods are available. Use the CourtListener coverage page to verify coverage for a specific court before building a flow that depends on it.

Creating a connection

The connector supports the following authentication types:
Default Parameters for creating connection. All regions Not shareable

Default

Applicable: All regions

Parameters for creating connection.

This is not shareable connection. If the power app is shared with another user, another user will be prompted to create new connection explicitly.

Name Type Description Required
Authorization Token securestring Enter your CourtListener API token in the format: Token your_api_token True

Actions

Get docket

Retrieve a single court docket by its CourtListener numeric ID.
Get docket entries

List docket entries for a specific court docket, with optional filtering and sorting.
Look up citation

Verify one or more legal citations, or extract all citations from a block of text.
Search dockets

Search federal court dockets by case name, docket number, court, or filing date. Use field selection to limit the response payload.
Search opinions

Search case law opinions by keyword, court, judge, or date using full-text search. Narrowing the query to a specific court or date range improves performance.

Get docket

Operation ID:
GetDocket

Retrieve a single court docket by its CourtListener numeric ID.

Parameters

Name Key Required Type Description
Docket ID
 id True integer

The CourtListener numeric ID of the docket to retrieve.
Fields
 fields string

Comma-separated list of fields to include in the response, reducing payload size and database load (for example, id,case_name,docket_number).

Returns

Body
Docket

Get docket entries

Operation ID:
GetDocketEntries

List docket entries for a specific court docket, with optional filtering and sorting.

Parameters

Name Key Required Type Description
Docket ID
 docket True integer

The numeric ID of the docket (for example, 73382952). Use the ID field from a Get docket response, not the full resource URI.
Entry Number
 entry_number integer

Filter by a specific docket entry number.
Filed On or After
 date_filed__gte date

Filter entries filed on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
Filed On or Before
 date_filed__lte date

Filter entries filed on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
Order By
 ordering string

Sort results by a field name, prefixed with a hyphen for descending order.
Page Size
 page_size integer

Number of results to return per page.
Cursor
 cursor string

Pagination cursor from the next or previous URL in a prior response.
Fields
 fields string

Comma-separated list of fields to include in the response, reducing payload size and database load (for example, id,entry_number,description).

Returns

Body
DocketEntryList

Look up citation

Operation ID:
GetCitation

Verify one or more legal citations, or extract all citations from a block of text.

Parameters

Name Key Required Type Description
Text
 text string

A block of legal text from which to extract and verify all citations.
Volume
 volume string

The volume number of the reporter for a single citation lookup.
Reporter
 reporter string

The reporter abbreviation for a single citation lookup (for example, U.S. or F.3d).
Page
 page string

The page number within the reporter volume for a single citation lookup.

Returns

response
array of CitationResult

Search dockets

Operation ID:
SearchDockets

Search federal court dockets by case name, docket number, court, or filing date. Use field selection to limit the response payload.

Parameters

Name Key Required Type Description
Case Name
 case_name string

Filter dockets by case name (partial match).
Docket Number
 docket_number string

Filter dockets by docket number.
Court
 court string

Filter dockets by court identifier (for example, scotus or ca9). Use court=xyz rather than court__id=xyz to avoid an expensive database join.
Filed On or After
 date_filed__gte date

Filter dockets filed on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
Filed On or Before
 date_filed__lte date

Filter dockets filed on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
Order By
 ordering string

Sort results by a field name, prefixed with a hyphen for descending order.
Page Size
 page_size integer

Number of results to return per page.
Cursor
 cursor string

Pagination cursor from the next or previous URL in a prior response.
Fields
 fields string

Comma-separated list of fields to include in the response, reducing payload size and database load (for example, id,case_name,docket_number).

Returns

Body
DocketList

Search opinions

Operation ID:
SearchOpinions

Search case law opinions by keyword, court, judge, or date using full-text search. Narrowing the query to a specific court or date range improves performance.

Parameters

Name Key Required Type Description
Search Query
 q string

Full-text search query using CourtListener search operators.
Court
 court string

Filter opinions by court identifier (for example, scotus or ca9). Use court=xyz rather than court__id=xyz to avoid an expensive database join.
Order By
 order_by string

Sort results by a field, for example score desc or dateFiled desc.
Filed After
 filed_after date

Filter opinions filed after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
Filed Before
 filed_before date

Filter opinions filed before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
Cursor
 cursor string

Pagination cursor from the next or previous URL in a prior response.
Fields
 fields string

Comma-separated list of fields to include in the response, reducing payload size and database load (for example, id,caseName,citation).

Returns

Body
OpinionSearchList

Definitions

DocketList

Name Path Type Description
Count
 count integer

The total number of dockets matching the query.
Next Page URL
 next string

The URL to retrieve the next page of results.
Previous Page URL
 previous string

The URL to retrieve the previous page of results.
Results
 results array of Docket

The list of dockets matching the query.

Docket

Name Path Type Description
ID
 id integer

The CourtListener numeric ID of the docket.
Resource URI
 resource_uri string

The URI of this docket resource.
Court ID
 court_id string

The identifier of the court (for example, scotus or ca9).
Case Name
 case_name string

The short name of the case.
Full Case Name
 case_name_full string

The full name of the case.
Docket Number
 docket_number string

The docket number assigned by the court.
Date Filed
 date_filed string

The date the case was filed.
Date Terminated
 date_terminated string

The date the case was terminated, if applicable.
Date Argued
 date_argued string

The date the case was argued, if applicable.
Assigned Judge
 assigned_to_str string

The name of the judge assigned to this case.
Referred To
 referred_to_str string

The name of the magistrate judge this case was referred to, if applicable.
Nature of Suit
 nature_of_suit string

The nature of suit code for this case.
Jurisdiction Type
 jurisdiction_type string

The type of jurisdiction for this case.
Cause
 cause string

The cause of action for this case.
Jury Demand
 jury_demand string

Whether a jury was demanded in this case.
URL Path
 absolute_url string

The relative URL path for this docket. Prepend https://www.courtlistener.com to construct the full link (for example, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73382952/case-name/).
PACER Case ID
 pacer_case_id string

The PACER case ID for this docket, if available.
Source
 source integer

The source code indicating how this docket was acquired.
Blocked
 blocked boolean

Whether this docket is blocked from search engine indexing.

DocketEntryList

Name Path Type Description
Count
 count integer

The total number of entries matching the query.
Next Page URL
 next string

The URL to retrieve the next page of results.
Previous Page URL
 previous string

The URL to retrieve the previous page of results.
Results
 results array of DocketEntry

The list of docket entries.

DocketEntry

Name Path Type Description
ID
 id integer

The CourtListener numeric ID of this docket entry.
Date Filed
 date_filed string

The date this entry was filed.
Date Entered
 date_entered string

The date this entry was entered into the docket.
Entry Number
 entry_number integer

The sequential entry number on the docket.
Description
 description string

The text description of this docket entry.
PACER Sequence Number
 pacer_sequence_number integer

The PACER sequence number for this entry, if available.

OpinionSearchList

Name Path Type Description
Count
 count integer

The total number of opinions matching the query.
Next Page URL
 next string

The URL to retrieve the next page of results.
Previous Page URL
 previous string

The URL to retrieve the previous page of results.
Results
 results array of OpinionSearchResult

The list of opinion search results.

OpinionSearchResult

Name Path Type Description
ID
 id integer

The CourtListener numeric ID of this opinion.
Docket ID
 docket_id integer

The ID of the docket associated with this opinion.
Court ID
 court_id string

The identifier of the court that issued this opinion.
Case Name
 caseName string

The name of the case.
Docket Number
 docketNumber string

The docket number for this case.
Date Filed
 dateFiled string

The date this opinion was filed.
Citations
 citation array of string

The list of citations for this opinion.
Status
 status string

The precedential status of this opinion.
Cite Count
 citeCount integer

The number of times this opinion has been cited.
Judge
 judge string

The name of the judge who authored this opinion.
Per Curiam
 per_curiam boolean

Whether this opinion was issued per curiam by the full court.
URL Path
 absolute_url string

The relative URL path for this opinion. Prepend https://www.courtlistener.com to construct the full link (for example, https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10863230/case-name/).
Snippet
 snippet string

A text excerpt from the opinion relevant to the search query.

CitationResult

Name Path Type Description
Citation
 citation string

The citation that was looked up.
Normalized Citations
 normalized_citations array of string

Corrected citations if the input contained typos or non-canonical abbreviations.
Start Index
 start_index integer

The character position in the input text where this citation begins.
End Index
 end_index integer

The character position in the input text where this citation ends.
Status
 status integer

The HTTP status code for this citation lookup result.
Error Message
 error_message string

Details about any error encountered during the citation lookup.
Clusters
 clusters array of CitationCluster

The CourtListener cases matching this citation.

CitationCluster

Name Path Type Description
Cluster ID
 id integer

The CourtListener cluster ID for this case.
Case Name
 case_name string

The name of the case matching this citation.
URL Path
 absolute_url string

The relative URL path for this case. Prepend https://www.courtlistener.com to construct the full link (for example, https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10863230/case-name/).