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Members of the public should contact the LA Law Library for legal resources and services.
Free Dockets and Court Documents from Libraries and Legal Organizations
Some libraries and reputable legal organizations post dockets and court documents online for free. The websites below are generally trustworthy sources of free dockets and court documents:
- SCOTUSblogExhaustive coverage of cases heard before the United States Supreme Court. In addition to daily posts, the blog tracks current cases, with links to briefs, decisions and lower court opinions.
- Preview of United States Supreme Court CasesUnofficial American Bar Association collection of briefs and calendars for Supreme Court cases dating back to 2003.
- 9th Circuit Court of Appeals CollectionNinth Circuit Court of Appeals briefs digitized by UC Hastings Law Library.
- National Archives CatalogSearch the name of a case to check if it is one of the handful of high-profile federal cases the National Archives has scanned and posted the records of online. (Records that have not been scanned can be purchased- see the Archives and Depositories tab.)
- Supreme Court of California Resources (SCOCAL)Stanford Law Library project providing California Supreme Court materials dating back to 1934, including briefs, docket information, biographies of the justices, annotations written by Stanford law students, and links to media coverage of cases.
- California Appellate BriefsBriefs filed in California Court of Appeals cases, provided by the LA Law Library. Recent briefs are provided as free scanned PDFs. Earlier briefs are listed in the database but the full text must be retrieved from the paid LLMC Digital database or requested via e-delivery for a fee.
Other Free Dockets and Court Filings
Caution by kaneiderdaniel/ CC BY SA 3.0
Be cautious when accessing dockets on other free websites- there is no guarantee that they are complete or accurate.
Usually, your most reliable, trustworthy bet for locating additional free court filings is to Google the name of any major law firms, government organizations (e.g. the California Attorney General, the Department of Justice), or activist groups (e.g. the ACLU) involved in the case to see if they have posted any filings on their websites.
You should also try Googling the case name or litigants' names, especially if the case is high profile. Sometimes, this will turn up filings on news website, litigants' personal websites, websites focused on a specific legal issue, or websites devoted to archiving un-copyrighted materials, such as HathiTrust, Google Books, and Archive.org.
Finally, some websites are specifically devoted to posting free dockets and court documents:
- Legal Dockets OnlineDirectory of official and unofficial websites of state and federal court dockets.
- LLRX Court Rules, Forms, & DocketsDirectory of over 1,400 official and unofficial websites of state and federal court rules, forms, and dockets.
- PACER ProPACER Pro allows existing PACER users to sign up for a free account that streamlines searching, retrieving, and saving documents (for standard PACER fees) and provides free access to documents pulled by previous PACER Pro users. Documents are generally reliable because they are pulled directly from PACER by PACER Pro, but you will still need to pay to refresh the docket to ensure completeness.
- Court Listener RECAPCourt Listener RECAP allows anyone to access documents that have previously been pulled from the federal courts' PACER filing system. It also provides free browser extensions so that you can automatically save and share any documents that you purchase from PACER. Be aware, however, that because RECAP depends on users to upload the documents it cannot guarantee their reliability or completeness.
- Hollywood Reporter, Esq.Trustworthy but highly selective court documents from high profile entertainment industry cases.
- The Smoking GunDocuments from cases that involve high profile people or particularly entertaining facts.