On March 19th, 2026, CALL’s Government Relations Committee welcomed Jessica Frank to discuss the Free Law Project’s mission, their tools, and their future projects. Since 2010, the Free Law Project has been using technology to increase access to case law, federal docket information, and provide open-source tools to make legal research more accessible. As librarians, their mission of increasing access to legal information meshes well with that of law librarians, and it is well worth it to increase collaboration.
I first wanted to highlight the tools discussed by Jessica in the webinar. First and foremost, there is Court Listener, located here: https://www.courtlistener.com/. The details and statistics of this database are listed below, along with the subsidiary databases (i.e. RECAP Archive, Oral Argument Database, and Judge and their financial disclosure database information:
- CourtListener
• Largest and most familiar tool—comparable to traditional legal research platforms
• 10M+ opinions; 40M+ citations
• Supports keyword, operator, and (as of May 4, 2026) natural language searching.
• Contains: State and Federal Caselaw, federal docket info, oral arguments, judge data, and judicial financial disclosures - RECAP Archive
• Browser extension that captures PACER documents and shares them freely.
• 500M+ docket entries; 57M+ cases
• 30,000+ users
• “Pray and Pay” Feature – Enables users without a PACER account to request a filing on a specific docket. - Oral Arguments
• 3.2M+ minutes of audio from all 13 federal circuits
• AI-powered transcription makes audio searchable and accessible. - Judges Database
• Comprehensive federal judge profiles including financial disclosures.
• Supports accountability and transparency in the judiciary. - APIs, AI & Open Source
• All code is open source: github.com/freelawproject
• APIs and AI integrations are available for developers and researchers.
Jessica also provided video demonstrations to help with adoption of the Free Law Projects main databases and tools, linked below:
CourtListener Demonstration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUr_9bPCnfQ
Researching Federal Litigation with RECAP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9KG59MbedU
Finally, there is one additional resource the Free Law Project offers that is worth mentioning. Bots.law is the Free Law Projects “current awareness monitoring” or case tracking solution. Currently, it exists as social media accounts that a user can follow to track new filings in a variety of cases, organized by specific high-profile cases (Big Cases bot), or topically by tech, antitrust, free speech, etc. (Little Cases Bots). This is a useful resource as it stands, however, they are working on a chat integration for slack, discord, teams, and google chat for a more immersive concierge to assist with case updates. While it is still on a waiting list, it is an exciting development to meet more legal information seekers where they are.
What’s Next and How We Can Help
On December 3rd, 2025, the Free Law Project announced that they won an AWS Imagine Grant for Nonprofits to build a portal for Pro Se litigants. You can read more in-depth what this means HERE. In the past few years, the number of individuals representing themselves in court has risen. While a good portion of this in recent years is due to the rise of Artificial Intelligence, much of it also has to do with the often-prohibitive cost of legal services. Nevertheless, Pro Se litigants face many hurdles in advocating for themselves in court, as CourtWatch News has recently reported on HERE (CourtWatch is another entity that is doing great work). Pro Se litigants are often completely on their own when it comes to navigating procedural complexities, researching caselaw, and/or completing technical legal forms. This is the gap that Free Law Project’s Pro Se Litigant portal is trying to fill. Unfortunately, the deadline to apply to become a court partner during the development of the portal has passed, but it is worthwhile to keep an eye on for the future when it becomes more widely available.
Additionally, The Free Law Project announced on May 12th, 2026, that their Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector is now available to Claude AI, even as a free user. This includes access to Case Law, PACER data, citation analysis, oral argument transcripts, judge data, search, alerts, and more (and you can read the full announcement on their blog HERE). This is a huge step for individuals who may have a legal information need, but do not know where to begin, and therefore turn to AI given its user-friendly interface. This is why ensuring the AI-model draws information from a reputable source is critical as both the legal information seeker and the courts want to prevent hallucinations, miscites, and illogical conclusions in filed documents.
While the Free Law Project’s efforts to bring legal information and guidance to the public are impressive, professional experience is still necessary, which is precisely where law librarians can and should step in, not only to adequately serve the patrons of our respective institutions, but also to help create a mutually beneficial relationship.
First, we can advertise to library patrons, students, and the public that this resource exists, and is a reliable (and free!) source of primary law and federal docket information. Second, we can use it ourselves. The more users, the more the platform will improve. Also, install the RECAP extension if you can on your work or personal device. Once you have the RECAP extension installed, you can help others purchase the court documents they need through the “Pray and Pay” service on CourtListener. You can see the leaderboard with the most-wanted documents HERE. This can be particularly helpful if you use your personal PACER account sparingly and do not meet the minimum $30 quarterly threshold.
Next, we can organize events around fundraising to help the organization build out necessary infrastructure. The Claude connector has certainly taken off for the Free Law Project, and their technology costs are surely rising with the increased usage. Finally, we can ask what advocacy initiatives we can help with and combine efforts. Notably, the Free law Project supports vendor neutral citation standards, and the Open Courts Act, which would make PACER free, more on that and their new Justice Initiatives Division HERE.
This is certainly not an exhaustive list of how we can partner and align with the Free Law Project, it is merely some initial suggestions. It is hard to imagine an organization that is doing more to further a cause that would make our lives easier as professionals, help students on their journeys, and help those who are struggling with a legal issue. I look forward to working with the Free Law Project, and all CALL members, to better assist our patrons and the public.
About the author
Ross Prolic is a Research Librarian at Barack Ferrazzano.