How to Search Federal and State Court Opinions Programmatically (CourtListener API)

Legal research is expensive. Westlaw and LexisNexis cost hundreds per month. Google Scholar covers some case law but has no API and limited filtering. If you need structured access to court opinions -- case names, judges, citations, docket numbers, opinion text -- your options narrow fast. CourtListener, maintained by the Free Law Project, is the largest free repository of US court opinions. It covers the Supreme Court, all federal circuit and district courts, bankruptcy courts, and most state courts. Millions of opinions, fully searchable, with citation data and downloadable documents. The catch: CourtListener's API is functional but requires pagination handling, response parsing, and familiarity with their court ID system. If you just need 100 opinions matching a search query, it's more setup than it should be. What you get from each opinion Every result includes: caseName -- full case name (e.g., "Gonzalez v. Google LLC") court and courtId -- the court that issued the opinion (e.g.,