Dockets and Court Documents in State and Federal Courts: Getting Started

This guide is split into two areas: state and federal.  Within each page, you will find free (or low-cost government) databases on the left-hand side and subscription databases on the right-hand side.  These options are geared toward the researcher who is looking for fairly recent cases (generally 2000-present).  Older case documents are less likely to have been digitized and therefore will often require a visit to a courthouse or archive; in that event, it is best to start by calling the court itself, and you also might ultimately want to hire a courier (for example, through the Public Record Retriever Network (PRRN)).