CourtListener MCP

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server published by Free Law Project. MCP is a standard developed by Anthropic for connecting external tools and data to Claude. An MCP server is a small piece of software that exposes specific functions (like "search court opinions" or "look up a citation") to Claude, so that anyone using Claude can call those functions without leaving the conversation.

A user of Claude (in the web app, the desktop app, or Claude Code) can add the CourtListener connector once. After that, when the user asks Claude a legal research question, Claude can query CourtListener directly, retrieve relevant opinions or dockets, and use the results in its response. The retrieval happens automatically; the user does not have to copy-paste search results.

The connector is free.

What it does

The connector exposes the core CourtListener search and retrieval functions to Claude:

Search opinions by keyword, citation, judge, date, or court.

Look up a citation and pull the full text of the opinion.

Search dockets in federal court cases from the RECAP archive.

Retrieve a docket entry with its associated filings.

When Claude calls one of these functions, the result returns into the conversation. Claude can then summarize, quote, analyze, or pass through the result depending on what the user asked.

What it does not do

It does not generate legal analysis on its own. The connector returns primary sources. Claude does the analysis based on what is retrieved.

It does not cover material that is not in CourtListener. State court coverage gaps, missing secondary sources, and absent trial-court records all carry over from the underlying database.

It does not validate citations or check whether case law is still good law. There is no built-in citator function.

It does not change the user's Claude subscription. Claude is a paid product (with a free tier and a nonprofit discount through Claude for Nonprofits). The CourtListener connector adds a data source; it does not add Claude access.

Setup

For users on Claude with MCP connector support: Settings → Connectors → add CourtListener. The connector is configured once and remains available across conversations.

For developers using Claude Code: the MCP server can be added to a project configuration so that Claude has access to CourtListener as part of any session in that project.

The connector is open source.