While content may still be king online, in the courtroom legal data is often the key to the checkmate move. With that in mind, we have researched some of the top legal data providers nationwide. Understanding this is a broad category, we’ve outlined five of the top performers in the legal data provider industry.
Make sure to check out our in-depth comparison grid of the top 5 legal data providers below.
UniCourt
UniCourt’s founders — Josh Blandi, Prashanth Shenoy, Yongxin Yan and Charles “Jud” Hemming — saw a gap in the legal data marketplace. There wasn’t a single platform to search for state and federal court data. They created UniCourt in 2014 to help provide a single platform for lawyers and law firms to get all their court data. Law firms are able to use the platform for business development, litigation strategy and analytics, docket management, and more.
The recipients of the Technology Award from the 2021 American Legal Technology Awards, CEO Josh Blandi said, “We look forward to building better and greater things in the coming years. There is such a tremendous opportunity to apply technology within the legal industry.” Josh has also been featured in the Class of 2023 Legal Rebels by the ABA Journal and the ABA Center for Innovation. and is a Fastcase50 honoree.
Docket Alarm
Docket Alarm (owned by Fastcase) houses a library of litigation records and uses its machine learning to help identify judicial trends and predict litigation outcomes for its subscribers. The application provides analytics on judges, parties, law firms and attorneys. The data provided includes win rates, time to decision, gender diversity in law firms, and more. Designed by an engineer who became an intellectual property attorney, he saw an opportunity to improve the legal data industry.
LexisNexis
As early as the 1970s, LexisNexis began making legal data available for lawyers. The goal was to cut out the librarians so lawyers could access legal research right from their desks. As of 2006, the organization had the most legal data. Today, LexisNexis brings machine learning, natural language processing, visualization, and artificial intelligence to its worldwide database to serve its legal and corporate clients.
Westlaw
Westlaw is brought to lawyers by Thomson Reuters. Its newest product brings AI to the legal research platform to better compete with the rest of the marketplace. Westlaw was also founded in the 1970s and has a history of shared origins with LexisNexis.
Bloomberg Law
Bloomberg Industry Group brings subscribers an all-in-one subscription to Bloomberg Law which combines legal analytics with legal research tools and an unlimited catalogue of primary and second sources as well as analysis.
Comparison Grid of the Top 5 Legal Data Providers
| Company | Cost | Specialty | Legal Data APIs | Case Tracking | On-Demand Updates | Records |
| UniCourt | $49-$299/ month + Enterprise API offered separately | Providing API-first Platform, Data, Analytics, Comprehensive State and Federal Coverage | UniCourt Enterprise API (Court Data API, Legal Analytics API) | Yes (Real-Time Alerts, Automated Court Searches, Court Data API) | Yes | 3B + |
| Docket Alarm | $99/month + Pay Per Use for documents, new case alerts, federal court data, docket tracking, APIs | Providing Data, Docket Alerts, Built-in Analytics | Create client lawsuit alerts, synchronize cases, search court records | Yes (Real-Time Alerts, New case filings are attached to all alert emails ) | Yes | 500M + |
| LexisNexis | $85-$250/month (3-year commitment) | Legal Research, Draft Documents, Analytics, Brief Analysis, News Hub | No | Yes (Scheduled alerts with email and attachment, changes are only checked on the frequency you select (i.e. its not real-time)) | Yes | 700M + |
| Westlaw Edge | $150-$260/month | Legal Research, Analytics | Ligation Analytics API, Practical Law Data API | No | No | Unknown |
| Bloomberg Law | Unknown | Legal Research, Analytics, News | No | No | No | Unknown |
