Free Law Project ⚖

@free

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.

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Free Law Project ⚖@free· 21d

2/2 Our executive director, @michaeljaylissner.com provided the following quote:

“Bringing FOIA to the federal judiciary aligns it with the executive branch and numerous state judiciaries that are already subject to Sunlight laws. The federal judiciary was appropriated north of nine billion dollars for 2026 and American taxpayers deserve to know how that money is being spent. Faith in the rule of law is a founding tenet of our democracy that is strengthened by the transparency this bill brings,” said Michael Lissner, Executive Director Free Law Project.

Free Law Project ⚖@free· May 15

Correction: We deleted the post below because it's more 1,300 users, not 3k. We were looking at the wrong metric, but we're still thrilled with over 1,300 users trying out our MCP!

A post that begins: "Three thousand people have signed up for our MCP since launch yesterday..."

Free Law Project ⚖@free· May 4

Semantic search is now live on CourtListener! Search case law using the words you know — No need to know legalese to do legal research. This surfaces the results you need even when they use different terminology than your query. free.law/2026/05/04/s...

A screenshot of our homepage. It shows a big search bar. On the left is a toggle where you can flip between & or ?. There's a tooltip that reads: "Try Semantic Search." Click the to toggle between & keyword and ? semantic search. Learn more."

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Apr 21

“Our goal for almost 20 years now has been to create this vision … where there is a lot of organizations competing to create good legal innovation and affordable legal research tools.”

In addition to leveraging that data, Descrybe also has a commercial license with the Free Law Project, a nonprofit that provides access to its own developed primary law database. Von Zastrow told Law.com that parts of the historical data in Midpage’s platform came from Free Law Project as well.

For Michael Lissner, the project’s co-founder and executive director, the emergence of more startups in the market is a testament to the nonprofit’s long-term focus. “Our goal for almost 20 years now has been to create this vision … where there is a lot of organizations competing to create good legal innovation and affordable legal research tools.”

He called the Free Law project a “spiritual successor to the Harvard data set, because we took their content and we merged it into our own. ... We made over a million enhancements to it.”

The Free Law project is also expanding its database, recently announcing an already –in-progress initiative to scan and digitize case law from commercially published volumes of opinions.

With the new additions, Lissner noted, the database will be competitive with those offered by legacy research providers. “It's not a simple thing where you can say the materials on Free Law Project are insufficient or not good enough. We definitely have gaps. We're definitely not as good as Westlaw, but the scanning project is going to close that gap once and for all.”

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Mar 10

We have two goals for PACER: 1) Make it secure and modern 2) Make it free After getting repeatedly hacked, the courts are finally modernizing PACER. The best time for security is before you get hacked, but we'll take the win. The new system must be free. www.uscourts.gov/data-news/ju...

As government and private sector IT systems come under increasing attack by sophisticated cyber criminals, two federal judges outlined a plan before the Judicial Conference of the United States to accelerate the Judiciary’s development of a new more secure case management system.

Addressing the Conference on Tuesday, Appellate Judge Michael Y. Scudder, who chairs the Conference’s Information Technology Committee, and District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, chairman of the Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, said that development of a replacement for the federal Judiciary’s aging system is on a fast track, with initial components being tested this year at six courts around the country.

“This project is a top priority for our branch,” Judge Van Tatenhove said. “It is one we are accelerating to meet our security and operational needs. We must do this given the acute and persistent risk faced by our current CM/ECF system.

The new system will replace the Case Management/Electronic Case Files system (CM/ECF) that the courts have relied on for nearly three decades to manage heavy caseloads and carry out court operations. It is used by litigants to file cases and related documents, and it provides the public with access to over 1 billion court records.

It is anticipated that the district courts will be the first to start implementing aspects of the new case management system within the next year, followed by appellate and bankruptcy courts. The timeline for completion is two to three years sooner than originally expected.

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Dec 23

Y’all know we have a tool for finding exactly these kinds of bad redactions, right? free.law/open-source-...

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Dec 17

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."

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Dec 14

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.

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Dec 2

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

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Sep 29

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

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Sep 25

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.

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Sep 24

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."

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Sep 17

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

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Sep 10

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

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Sep 3

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.

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Aug 26

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!

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Aug 14

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

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Aug 1

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!”

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Jul 31

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.

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Jul 31

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.

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Jun 18

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.)

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Jun 3

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!

Free Law Project ⚖@free· May 22

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.

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Apr 17

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...

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Apr 10

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...

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Apr 2

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...

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Apr 2

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...

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Mar 27

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...

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Mar 27

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!

Free Law Project ⚖@free· Mar 25

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: