Free and Low Cost Resources for Legal Research: Case Law

The Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) expands public access to U.S. law. Goal is to make all published U.S. court decisions freely available to the public online, in a consistent format, digitized from the collection of the Harvard Law Library. CAP includes all official, book-published United States case law — every volume designated as an official report of decisions by a court within the United States. Available via API and bulk download, some search capabilities available.

Casetext combines state-of-the-art search capability with a free legal research platform. Casetext’s platform is unique in enabling users to add personalized meta-data to documents and then use this data to filter and refine subsequent searches. Casetext enables sophisticated queries including term proximity and keyword boosting. AI product CARA available for a fee. Access for law faculty and students is free. Sign up here.

Free legal research website containing millions of legal opinions from federal and state courts. Includes RECAP, court documents downloaded from PACER. Developed by the Free Law Project, launched in 2016.

Searchable database of decisions from federal and state courts.

Links to legal opinions and law review articles.

Access to all Supreme Court cases, Courts of Appeals cases beginning with 1950, district court cases beginning with 2004, some state case law. Allows browsing by type of lawsuit.

Case summaries database; includes important rulings and decisions, to ensure efficient and faster legal research.

RECAP is an online archive and free extension for Firefox and Chrome that improves the experience of using PACER, the electronic public access system for the U.S. Federal District and Bankruptcy Courts. The online archive contains millions of searchable PACER documents and can be used to do deep research within a case, a topic, or a jurisdiction. The archive also now includes every free opinion on PACER.

Contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between 1791 and 2018.

Federal district, appellate, bankruptcy, and Court of International Trade opinoins in PDF format.