One of our goals at the law library is to prepare students for Life After Law School by providing access to a wide variety of technologies, software, and research platforms. We are excited to announce that BYU Law students and faculty now have access to UniCourt, a docket research and analytics tool that also provides case tracking.
UniCourt is focused on providing easy access to court dockets and records, both federal and state, and analyzing those dockets to gain insights, including:
- Top law firms and attorneys within litigation practice areas, such as patent litigation;
- Benchmarking firm performance using KPIs (key performance indicators);
- Business development; and
- Monitoring investment targets.
UniCourt has faced a number of challenges. Some state court systems are offline. State court record systems that are online use different formats for metadata (the descriptive information about dockets and records that enables search), which makes it difficult to merge records from different state courts into a single, searchable platform. UniCourt provides access to state court records from Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas, and recently added Indiana and New York to its coverage. However, not all counties’ records from those states are available on UniCourt.
An intriguing feature of UniCourt is its availability of APIs. Researchers with coding skills can use UniCourt’s APIs to pull data directly from UniCourt, such as docket updates, parties, attorneys, and case types. More information is available in UniCourt’s developer hub.
Students will receive an email from UniCourt by the end of the week with a link to set up an account. Student accounts do not have document download privileges; if you’re interested in downloading documents, contact a librarian. We hope you will take the opportunity to become familiar with this tool. Training opportunities will be available in the future.