The Oyez Project

What The Oyez Project does

The Oyez Project is a free, non-profit multimedia archive dedicated to making the U.S. Supreme Court accessible to the general public, legal professionals, and students/educators. Founded in the late 1980s by Professor Jerry Goldman at Northwestern University and now operated collaboratively by Cornell's Legal Information Institute (LII), Justia, and Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Oyez holds the most complete and authoritative archive of Supreme Court audio since the Court's recording system was installed in October 1955. The platform delivers transcript-synchronized and searchable audio (14,000+ hours digitized and sentence-aligned), plain-English case summaries, illustrated decision information, full-text Supreme Court opinions via Justia, detailed justice profiles, and a panoramic Supreme Court building tour. Supporting offerings include the Oyez Lawyer Directory, the Top Advocates Report, and special projects such as Shifting Scales, Body Politic, Argument 2.0, and Brown Revisited.

The platform is built on a web-based multimedia architecture with sentence-level transcript alignment, audio streaming, and searchable case content distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Content is delivered through oyez.org as a direct self-serve product, supplemented by podcast distribution, social media channels (Facebook, X/Twitter), email newsletter integration with Justia, and academic citations. There is no sales team, no commercial pricing, and no paid tiers; revenue derives entirely from grants (National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Google, Knight Foundation) and financial contributions from major law firms including Mayer Brown, Sidley Austin, Jones Day, Morrison & Foerster, Jenner & Block, and Arnold & Porter. Reach is anchored by Cornell LII's 115+ million pages served annually to 30+ million unique visitors, providing unmatched organic distribution for a niche legal archival product.

Name

The Oyez Project

Legal name

Oyez, Inc.

Website

https://oyez.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

1988

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

The Oyez Project is a free, non-profit multimedia archive that provides transcript-synchronized Supreme Court audio, case summaries, and justice profiles since 1955, serving the general public, legal professionals, and educators via a partnership of Cornell LII, Justia, and Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Legal Information Services

NAICS

Libraries and Archives (519210), Court Reporting and Stenotype Services (561492)

SIC

Miscellaneous Publishing (2741)

akta.pro primary industry

Legal Reference (Statutes, Case Law, Practice Guides) (EDAGAGAB)

akta.pro secondary industries

Law & Legal Studies (EDAGABAH), Court Services & Operations (Clerks, Records, Jury, Interpreters) (BPAIAFAH), Conference Proceedings & Research Reports Publishing (EDAGAFAL)

Keywords

• Legal information services
• Supreme court archive
• Multimedia legal database
• Oral argument transcripts
• Constitutional law resources

Headquarters

HQ city

Chicago

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Others

Revenue model

1. Donations and Grants: Funded through donations and grants from legal institutions, foundations, and law firms including National Science Foundation, Knight Foundation, Google, and major law firms. Operated as a non-profit initiative.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

The Oyez Project is a free multimedia archive of the U.S. Supreme Court that provides transcript-synchronized, searchable audio recordings of every oral argument and opinion announcement since October 1955, plain-English case summaries, illustrated decision information, and full-text Supreme Court opinions via integration with Justia. It also offers justice profiles, a panoramic 360-degree tour of the Supreme Court building, an advocate/lawyer directory, and supporting content projects such as Shifting Scales, Body Politic, Argument 2.0, and the Top Advocates Report.

Product overview

The Oyez Project is a single unified multimedia platform that provides free public access to the United States Supreme Court. The core offering consists of the Oyez Multimedia Archive, which delivers transcript-synchronized searchable audio, plain-English case summaries, illustrated decision information, and full-text opinions. Supporting products include the Oyez Lawyer Directory (advocate profiles with case histories), the Top Advocates Report (numerical rankings of Supreme Court oral argument advocates), and two special projects (Shifting Scales and Body Politic). The platform also features Argument 2.0 for enhanced argument access and Supreme Court Term Previews & Reviews video content. The project is a collaboration between Cornell's Legal Information Institute (LII), Justia, and Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Shifting Scales: A project exploring constitutional law issues related to the balance of government power.
• Body Politic
• Argument 2.0
• Lawyer Directory
• Top Advocates Report
• Brown Revisited

Products and services

• Oyez Multimedia Archive

Quantifiable outcome

• Serves over 30 million unique visitors annually through LII partnership

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Cornell's Legal Information Institute (LII)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2016Cornell LII is the current home of Oyez since 2016. LII is the oldest and largest free law site on the internet, founded in 1992, serving over 115 million pages annually to 30+ million visitors. LII provides the institutional backing and content infrastructure for Oyez.
• JustiacoreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2016Justia operates and supports Oyez's engineering backend and manages the editorial content including case summaries. Justia provides full-text Supreme Court opinions and operates the Oyez website infrastructure.
• Chicago-Kent College of LawcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2011Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Institute of Technology hosted Oyez from 2011-2016 before the move to Cornell. Professor Jerry Goldman (founder) was a research professor there and developed the project at this institution.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves8 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Broad incumbents

• FindLaw: Long-standing free legal information portal hosting Supreme Court opinions and case summaries; a historical institutional supporter of Oyez (per 2003 grants) and a directly overlapping publisher of free case law.
• Justia: Justia operates Oyez's engineering backend and edits Oyez case summaries, while also providing free case law, codes, regulations, and a lawyer directory. Direct operating partner and the broadest overlapping free legal information platform.
• Westlaw (Thomson Reuters): Premier legal research platform with the deepest case law archive, KeyCite citator, and analytics. Anchors the paid legal research segment alongside LexisNexis that Oyez positions against as a free public alternative.
• LexisNexis: Premium legal research platform with comprehensive case law, citator tools, and analytics used by most large law firms. Broad incumbent providing overlapping SCOTUS content but behind a paid wall for most users.
• Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII): Oyez's host institution and primary distribution partner since 2016; LII publishes the full text of Supreme Court opinions, the US Code, CFR, and the Federal Rules. It is the most direct functional analog as the oldest and largest free law site on the internet.

Emerging players

• Quimbee: Provides plain-English case summaries, video explainers, and study aids for law students, including Supreme Court cases. Closest competitor to Oyez's plain-English case summary functionality for the legal education segment.

Direct peers

• CourtListener: A free, open-source archive of U.S. court opinions and oral argument audio maintained by Free Law Project, with overlapping oral-argument audio, searchable transcripts, and an editorial/community model.
• SCOTUSblog: An independent blog covering the Supreme Court of the United States, with live blogs of oral arguments, in-depth case analysis, and statistics on advocates and justices. It is the most cited counterpart for doctrinal commentary and breaking SCOTUS news.
• Casetext (Acquired by Thomson Reuters): AI-driven legal research platform offering case summaries, brief analysis, and citator functionality for U.S. case law. Closest peer in digital-first legal research and case summarization, though commercial and broader in court coverage.

Others

• Supreme Court of the United States (Official Site): The primary source for Oyez's audio recordings and opinion text via the HERMES data feed. Operating licensee and content originator; not a competitor but the upstream authoritative publisher.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/oyez
• Facebookfacebook.com/OyezProject
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/the-oyez-project-at-chicago-kent

Compliance4 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

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 The Oyez Project