Claude CourtListener connectorWhat Claude can do in your CourtListener account.
The Claude CourtListener connector exposes 14 tools. 9 read US court records and citations, 4 change the alerts on your account, and 1 is a generic gateway whose effect no source spells out. Below: what Claude finds, what it changes and where it stops.
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What changes when Claude can search CourtListener
CourtListener is the legal research platform run by a nonprofit: US court opinions from federal and state courts, the RECAP archive of PACER filings, judges and oral arguments. With the connector, a paralegal or a journalist asks Claude a research question in plain English and Claude queries that database itself, with the same filters as the website.
Check a brief before it goes out. Paste the draft and analyze_citations pulls every case citation, matches it against the database and labels each one good, bad or ambiguous, with the canonical case name, court and date.
Research a question across courts. search covers case law, dockets, judges and oral arguments, and get_endpoint_item opens one opinion or docket in full once you have its ID.
Keep watch on a case. subscribe_to_docket_alert signs your account up for email updates on a docket, and create_search_alert sets a recurring alert on a query, from real time to monthly.
What it will not do: the alerts are emails from CourtListener, not Claude reacting to a new filing, because a connector only works while Claude answers you. The data is US law only. And the four alert tools change your CourtListener account, so they are the ones to watch. If you want a filing to trigger a chain of actions on its own, that is an automation tool's job, a different trade listed on the Integrations hub.
Five words before you connect
The Claude vocabulary this page uses, in one minute.
- Connector
- A link you set up once between Claude and an account you already own, so Claude can work in it while answering you.
- Tool
- One named action the connector opens to Claude. Claude chooses which to call on its own, and the directory sheet lists every name.
- Authorization
- The service's own sign-in screen, where you grant the access Claude will use. Given once per person, and it can be revoked.
- Approval
- The confirmation Claude waits for before doing something that changes your account, shown in the conversation at that moment.
- MCP
- The shared standard connectors run on, which is what lets an assistant like Claude talk to an outside service such as CourtListener.
Connect CourtListener to Claude in three steps
- 01
Find CourtListener
Open Claude's settings, go to Customize and then Connectors, and look up CourtListener. On a Team or Enterprise workspace, an Owner or Primary Owner enables it before members can each sign in.
- 02
Sign in to your account
Click Connect on its row. CourtListener opens its own sign-in window, where you log in with your CourtListener account. If the link breaks later, Disconnect and connect again.
- 03
Review the permissions
Read the authorization screen before you approve it: that screen belongs to CourtListener and decides what the access covers. You can also cut access from your CourtListener profile, and the publisher says it stops at once.
The 14 tools, by what they touch
CourtListener gives Claude 14 tools: 9 that read your account, 4 that change something in it, and 1 no official source describes.
Nine tools read, four change your alerts, and one generic gateway has no stated effect. Names stay exactly as Claude shows them.
- 9 read
- 4 write
- 1 not documented
What Claude reads (9)
9 toolsSearches, lookups and citation checks that leave your account as it is.
search
Queries case law, dockets, judges and oral arguments with the filters of the website, such as jurisdiction, date range, judge or citation, and returns results page by page.
get_endpoint_schema
Fetches the description of one API endpoint: which filters it accepts and which fields it returns. Claude reads it so a later query is built correctly.
get_endpoint_item
Opens a single record, an opinion, a docket or a judge, from its CourtListener ID, so Claude works from the full item instead of a search snippet.
get_choices
Lists the accepted values of a coded field, like court identifiers or case statuses, so Claude does not guess a code that the database would reject.
get_counts
Returns the total number of results for a query already run. Some queries only compute that figure on request, so it comes as a separate call.
get_more_results
Fetches the next page of a previous search or gateway call, which is how Claude goes past the first batch of matches.
extract_citations
Pulls every legal citation out of a block of text, including statutes, short cites, id. and supra. It runs on the server alone, with no API call and no rate limit.
analyze_citations
Goes one step further than extraction: each unique case citation is checked against the database and comes back labelled good, bad or ambiguous, with the canonical name, court and date.
resume_citation_analysis
Picks up a citation check that hit the per-call ceiling and verifies the citations still waiting, using the job ID the first run handed back.
What Claude changes (4)
4 toolsAlert and subscription tools that modify your CourtListener account state.
create_search_alert
Approval: see the ruleSaves a query as an alert on your CourtListener account, delivered in real time, daily, weekly or monthly.
delete_search_alert
Approval: see the ruleRemoves one of your saved search alerts, identified by its ID, so the matching emails stop.
subscribe_to_docket_alert
Approval: see the ruleSigns your account up for email updates on one specific docket, so new entries in that case reach your inbox.
unsubscribe_from_docket_alert
Approval: see the ruleEnds the email updates for a docket you previously followed, which edits your alert settings on CourtListener.
Effect not documented (1)
1 toolThe publisher names this tool's purpose but never says whether it only reads, so it stays in its own group.
call_endpoint
Its publisher presents it as a generic gateway to any endpoint of the CourtListener API with custom parameters, but no official text says whether it only reads or can also change data. This page draws no conclusion from that. Claude's general approval rule, below, is the only reference for it.
What Claude checks with you first
By default, Claude stops and asks for confirmation before each action it takes on an account for someone.
CourtListener's documentation says the four alert tools modify your account and that a client should prompt before calling them, adding that alerts can also be managed on the website. It recommends; it does not describe what Claude shows. On Team and Enterprise workspaces, owners decide whether members may let some actions run without a prompt each time, and can restrict what a connector does for the whole organization. Claude works only with the rights of the person who connected.
Which Claude plans include it
No official source publishes plan availability connector by connector. It is a real hole in the catalog, not a gap in our research.
The general rule is the only published one: remote connectors are open to all users on Claude, Cowork, Claude Desktop and mobile, and on Team and Enterprise an Owner or Primary Owner opens a connector for the organization before members connect. The connector's sheet in the official directory is the only place showing its live state, so check it from your own account.
Where this connector stops
A connector is not an automation. Claude calls these tools while it answers, so nothing happens on its own when a new opinion is published.
This connector is documented by its publisher alone: no Claude help article covers it. Its tool list is an observed floor, not a promise, since an administrator can open actions no public sheet shows. The directory badge is no security audit, and Anthropic states on every sheet that it does not pick a publisher's tools or guarantee their behavior. For a connector from a very different field, see the Claude affinity connector.
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