Justia Case Law Scraper

Justia Case Law Scraper

Scrape Justia case law from any US Supreme Court or federal appellate court, up to a million cases per run. Each case comes with its full text, docket number, date, court, and citation. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Justia's case law database is public, but manually copying decisions is slow and error-prone. This Actor reads the public case pages directly, filtered by court and year range, and returns each match in one fixed schema. It works for the US Supreme Court and all eleven federal circuit courts of appeals.

Who uses it	What they scrape Justia for
Legal researchers	Which precedents a circuit court relied on in a given year
Law firm associates	Building a private database of decisions for a practice area
Legal tech startups	Training citation or outcome prediction models on real opinions
Journalists	Tracking how a court's rulings evolved across a term

What it does

This Actor collects Justia case law by direct URL or by court and year filters, and returns each case as a flat row.

• 🔗 Start URL mode: paste one case page or one listing page and collect every case linked from it.
• ⚖️ Court filter: pick the US Supreme Court or any of the eleven federal circuit courts of appeals.
• 📅 Year range: set a start and end year to limit results to decisions filed in that window.
• 📦 Bulk export: up to one million cases per run, delivered as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Justia data

📚 Build a precedent library.

A law firm associate scrapes all Fifth Circuit decisions from 2020 to 2024 and imports them into a private search tool for motion practice.

📈 Track judicial trends.

A legal analytics startup collects SCOTUS opinions by year to measure how often the Court reverses lower courts.

🧠 Train legal AI.

A machine learning team scrapes thousands of circuit court opinions to fine-tune a model that predicts case outcomes.

📰 Investigate rulings.

A journalist pulls every Ninth Circuit immigration decision from a single year to find patterns in asylum denials.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	Justia has no official case law API, so this reads the public pages directly.
Fixed schema	Every case returns the same flat fields, ready for a database or spreadsheet.
Federal coverage	All twelve federal courts, from SCOTUS to the Eleventh Circuit.
Year filtering	Narrow results to a single term or a decade of decisions.

How it compares

This Actor focuses on case law opinions, while the competitors below target attorney profiles and lawyer directory listings.

Feature	ParseForge	Justia Scraper with Emails & Socials	Justia Lawyer Directory Scraper
Full case opinion text	Yes	Not listed	Not listed
Docket number and citation	Yes	Not listed	Not listed
Court and year filters	Yes	Not listed	Not listed
Attorney email and social enrichment	Not listed	Yes	Not listed
Lawyer directory by practice area	Not listed	Not listed	Yes

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a direct Justia URL, or leave it empty and set a court plus a year range. Filters run as each case is read, so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.03199 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$3.20
1,000 results	$31.99
10,000 results	$319.90

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Justia Case Law Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Justia through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/justia-case-law-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check your year range. If Year From is later than Year To, or the court has no decisions in that window, the Actor returns nothing. Also confirm the court selection matches your intent.

The run stops after a few cases.

Lower Max Items or increase the Actor's memory in the run settings. Large opinions can consume memory, and the Actor stops when it hits the limit.

Some cases are missing from the output.

Justia occasionally changes page layouts. If a case page fails to parse, the Actor skips it and logs a warning. Re-run with a narrower filter or report the URL.

The Start URL returns an error.

Make sure the URL points to a Justia case page or listing page, not a search results page. If it is a listing page, it must contain links to individual cases.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Which courts can I scrape?	The US Supreme Court and the eleven federal circuit courts of appeals, First through Eleventh. State courts are not included.
Can I scrape a single case?	Yes. Paste the case page URL into Start URL and set Max Items to 1. The Actor returns that case as one row.
What does a case row include?	The full opinion text, docket number, decision date, court name, and citation. The exact fields are shown in the sample output below.
Is there a rate limit?	The Actor respects Justia's robots.txt and throttles requests automatically. You can raise the max items up to one million per run.
Do I need a Justia account?	No. The Actor reads public pages without login or API key.
Can I filter by legal topic?	Not directly. Use the court and year filters, then filter the exported data by keywords in the opinion text.
What output formats are supported?	CSV, JSON, Excel, and XML. Choose the format in the Actor's output settings.
How do I scrape a listing page?	Paste the listing URL into Start URL. The Actor follows every case link on that page and collects each one.
Can I schedule recurring runs?	Yes. Use Apify's scheduler to run the Actor daily or weekly, for example to collect newly published decisions.
What if a case page is missing a field?	The field is left empty in that row. The schema stays the same for every case, so your dataset remains consistent.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Justia, Inc. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.