Free Law Project

What Free Law Project does

Free Law Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2010 and headquartered in Berkeley, California, that operates one of the largest open legal data infrastructures in the world. Its core platform, CourtListener, hosts over 10 million court opinions from more than 2,000 state and federal courts, supplemented by the RECAP Archive (400M+ federal filings, growing daily via a 30,000+ user browser extension), the largest open collection of oral argument audio (2.5M+ minutes with AI-generated transcripts), and a unique judicial financial disclosure database covering 16,000+ judges and 250,000+ pages of disclosures. The technology stack is open-source and built on Python, PostgreSQL, Django, and Django REST Framework, with public REST APIs (v4), webhooks, and bulk database replication, plus a suite of proprietary libraries (Juriscraper, Eyecite, X-Ray, Doctor, Inception) that are reused across the broader legal tech ecosystem.

The organization serves five primary segments: self-represented litigants, legal practitioners and law firms, journalists and researchers, legal technology companies, and legal aid organizations, with law schools and government entities as secondary audiences. Revenue is diversified across individual donations, foundation grants (NSF, Knight Foundation, Columbia Library, AWS Imagine Grant of $150K in 2025), tiered memberships ($10-$2,500/month), corporate sponsorships up to $25K/year, data services and consulting ($70-$750/hour depending on client type), and data licensing to legal tech companies such as ProPlaintiff.ai. Notable customers and users include Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, Harvard, OpenAI, Anthropic, and more than 1,000 verified government users.

Distribution is primarily self-serve and product-led through CourtListener.com, RECAP browser extensions (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari), Bots.law across Slack/Discord/Teams/Google Chat/Bluesky/Mastodon, and the May 2026 CourtListener MCP connector embedded in Anthropic's Claude. HeinOnline resells CourtListener case law into its institutional base, while data licensing deals extend reach to legal tech startups. Recent strategic priorities include becoming foundational open legal data infrastructure for AI applications, scaling the Justice Partner Circle for law firm engagement, and launching the Litigant Portal to serve self-represented litigants with AI-assisted workflows.

Name

Free Law Project

Legal name

Free Law Project

Website

https://free.law

Company type

Private

Founded year

2010

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Free Law Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit operating CourtListener and the RECAP Archive, the largest open U.S. legal data infrastructure serving self-represented litigants, journalists, legal practitioners, governments, and legal technology companies.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Legal Research Software

NAICS

Legal Services (5411), Other Legal Services (54119)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Miscellaneous Publishing (2741), Books: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2731)

akta.pro primary industry

Legal Practice Management & Case Management (BPAEAPAC)

akta.pro secondary industries

eDiscovery, Litigation Support & Legal Hold (BPAEAPAE), Legal & Regulatory Publishing (Case Law, Statutes, Treatises) (MPAJACAA), Law & Legal Studies Scholarly Publishing (EDAGAFAG)

Keywords

• Legal research platform
• Court data API
• PACER document archive
• Open legal data
• Judicial disclosure database

Headquarters

HQ city

Berkeley

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Data Services and Consulting: Custom data gathering, research, and reports for organizations. Services include bulk PACER data, customized research, and data analysis. Billed hourly or by project milestones with rates varying by client type (researchers/academics: $140/hr, journalists: $70-180/hr, non-profits: $140-180/hr, for-profit: $170-750/hr).
2. Membership Subscriptions: Tiered membership model providing premium access to CourtListener features including increased API rate limits, unlimited alerts, real-time alerts, and Pray & Pay requests. Individual tiers from $10-100/month ($100-1,000/year). Group tiers from $30-2,500/month based on organization size.
3. Organizational Sponsorships: Platinum sponsors at $25,000/year ($20,000 with 3-year commitment), Gold at $10,000/year, Silver at $1,000/year, Bronze at $500/year. Provides visibility and partnership benefits for organizations supporting the mission.
4. Individual Donations: Tax-deductible donations from individuals supporting the nonprofit mission. One-time and recurring donation options available.
5. Data Licensing: Licensing of case law data to legal technology companies (e.g., ProPlaintiff.ai integration of 6.7 million case law records). Data is made available via API or bulk data downloads.
6. Grants: Grant funding from foundations and organizations supporting access to justice and legal technology. Notable grants include AWS Imagine Grant ($150,000 in 2025), NSF grants, and Knight Foundation support for judicial database development.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels8 records

Marketing channels9 records

Core offering

Free Law Project operates CourtListener, a fully searchable archive of U.S. court opinions, oral arguments, judges, judicial financial records, and federal filings, supplemented by the RECAP Suite (browser extensions that liberate PACER documents into a free archive) and Bots.law (case-monitoring bots for chat and social platforms). The nonprofit organization also develops open-source legal data tools (Juriscraper, Eyecite, X-Ray, Doctor, Inception) and offers paid data services, tiered memberships, organizational sponsorships, and bulk data licensing to legal technology companies and researchers.

Product overview

Free Law Project operates a platform-plus-modules architecture centered on CourtListener as the primary research and monitoring interface, supplemented by the RECAP Suite for PACER data liberation, Bots.law for case notification delivery, and a suite of open-source tools (Juriscraper, Eyecite, X-Ray, Doctor, Inception) for data collection, citation extraction, document processing, and semantic search. The organization curates and provides access to multiple legal datasets (case law, RECAP archive, judge/disclosure database, reporters, courts, oral arguments, judicial portraits, court seals) and offers data services for custom research and consulting. Recent additions include an MCP integration connecting CourtListener to Anthropic's Claude AI and the Litigant Portal for self-represented litigants.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• CourtListener: Fully-searchable and accessible archive of court data including opinions, oral arguments, judges, judicial financial records, and federal filings. Hosts over 10 million court opinions and serves millions of users.
• RECAP Suite
• Bots.law

Products and services

• CourtListener Flagship legal research platform providing fully searchable access to over 10 million court opinions from 2,000+ courts, oral argument recordings, judge biographies, judicial financial disclosures, and federal filings; serves over 1 million visitors weekly and offers tiered membership plans.
• RECAP Suite Collection of PACER-liberation tools including browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari that automatically upload PACER purchases into the public RECAP Archive, plus docket alerts, search alerts, and the @recap.email notification handler for attorneys.
• Bots.law Case-monitoring bot system that posts updates to Slack, Discord, MS Teams, Google Chat, Bluesky, and Mastodon; Big Cases Bot follows important federal cases and Little Cases Bot enables custom topic-based tracking.
• Data Services and Consulting Custom data gathering, research, and reports for organizations, including bulk PACER data acquisition and customized legal data analysis; billed hourly or by project milestones with rates ranging from $70-$750/hour depending on client type.
• Litigant Portal Next-generation web application providing personalized legal guidance to self-represented litigants using AI, AI-assisted form preparation, document automation, and integrated eFiling workflows.
• CourtListener MCP Integration Model Context Protocol connector that enables Claude and other AI assistants to query CourtListener data in real time, including federal and state court decisions, PACER data, citation networks, and oral argument audio.

Quantifiable outcome

• 500,000+ weekly users on CourtListener
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers17 records

Segments6 records

Ideal customer profiles6 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration8 records

AI capability8 records

Feature14 records

Partnerships

Eleven partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• AnthropiccoreTechnology or Integration · 12 May 2026CourtListener MCP integration for Claude AI, providing AI assistants native access to case law, PACER data, citation analysis, oral arguments, and judge data. The integration is free to anyone, positioning CourtListener as foundational legal data infrastructure for AI applications.
• Justice Technology AssociationcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 12 May 2026FLP named as access to justice partner in Anthropic's Claude for Legal launch, alongside Courtroom5, BoardWise, and Descrybe. First time a leading AI company explicitly named access to justice as a foundational pillar.
• Thomson ReuterscoreTechnology or Integration · 12 May 2026Both Thomson Reuters and Free Law Project announced MCP integrations with Anthropic's Claude on the same day, connecting their databases to AI assistants. Thomson Reuters connects CoCounsel to 1.9 billion documents.
• HeinOnlinecoreTechnology or Integration · 10 December 2025HeinOnline announced a new case law offering powered by CourtListener, making FLP's open legal data available through HeinOnline's platform.
• Civil Rights Litigation ClearinghousecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 25 September 2025Partnership to explore how AI can unlock court data and make legal research smarter, faster, and more accessible. FLP is partnering with the Clearinghouse to look at ways AI can improve access to civil rights litigation data.
• Harvard Law School (Caselaw Access Project)coreTechnology or Integration · 26 March 2024Harvard Caselaw Access Project data (millions of digitized case law records) incorporated into CourtListener, completing coverage of American case law.
• vLexcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 12 September 2022Partnership to build a complete, updated, and audited open case law database. With vLex's support, FLP is working to create the first comprehensive free collection of American case law.
• Pre/DictaminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerCollaboration on judicial analytics database, combining Pre/Dicta's expertise with FLP's judicial financial disclosure data.
• JustiaminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerCollaboration on judicial database, contributing to the comprehensive structured database of judges and their financial interests.
• Elliott Ash (Princeton University)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerAcademic collaboration on judicial analytics research, working with FLP's comprehensive judicial database.
• Harvard Library Innovation LabcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCollaboration on Eyecite citation extraction tool development, combining FLP's reporter database with Harvard's caselaw data.

Scale indicators17 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Others

• CourtListener (Harvard Caselaw Access Project): Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab project that digitized millions of historical American case law records and partnered with Free Law Project in 2024 to integrate data into CourtListener. Comparable as a large-scale open case law initiative with shared mission and overlapping academic/journalist audience.

Broad incumbents

• Westlaw (Thomson Reuters): Premier legal research platform operated by Thomson Reuters; on the same day as FLP's MCP announcement, Westlaw's CoCounsel was also integrated with Claude AI. Comparable as the dominant paid legal research platform and the primary commercial competitor to CourtListener for legal AI infrastructure.
• LexisNexis: Largest commercial legal research incumbent alongside Westlaw. Comparable in aggregating case law, dockets, and judicial information at massive scale, but as a paid, proprietary platform serving large law firms and corporate legal departments — represents the traditional model FLP's open infrastructure is disrupting.

Direct peers

• Pre/Dicta: Legal analytics startup collaborating with Free Law Project on the judicial database. Comparable as a judicial analytics and litigation prediction platform using FLP's underlying data — overlapping technology category and customer base (law firms, litigators).
• vLex: Global legal research platform and Free Law Project's strategic partner (2022) co-developing a complete, updated, and audited open American case law database. Comparable in that both aggregate large-scale case law and offer APIs, but vLex is a commercial incumbent with broader international coverage and paid subscription model.
• Justia: Free legal information platform collaborating with Free Law Project on the judicial database. Comparable as a mission-driven legal information provider offering free case law, codes, and judge data, with a freemium model and audience of self-represented litigants and lawyers.
• HeinOnline: Legal research database that partnered with Free Law Project in December 2025 to power a new case law offering from CourtListener data. Comparable as a long-form legal publisher/research platform; both serve law schools, libraries, and legal professionals with comprehensive case law coverage.
• Casetext (Thomson Reuters): AI-powered legal research platform acquired by Thomson Reuters; now part of CoCounsel. Directly comparable as an AI-native legal research competitor leveraging large case law corpora, and a potential future distribution channel or competitor to Free Law Project's open MCP approach.

Regional players

• Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse: Nonprofit organization partnering with Free Law Project in 2025 to explore AI applications for civil rights litigation data. Comparable as a mission-driven legal data organization targeting public-interest litigation, with shared nonprofit ethos and overlapping user base of legal aid organizations and researchers.

Emerging players

• Courtroom5: Guided self-representation platform named alongside Free Law Project as an access-to-justice partner in Anthropic's Claude for Legal launch. Comparable as a direct-to-litigant legal technology targeting the same self-represented market segment, with overlapping mission and AI-enabled workflows.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/freelawproject
• GitHubgithub.com/freelawproject
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/free-law-project

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles9 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Free Law Project