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Case Law Search Engine That Answers in Plain English
Ask a real legal question the way you would ask a senior associate and get the cases that answer it, each with a citation and a one-paragraph holding.
CASESEARCH · RESEARCH
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Reading opinions
Finding the authorities that answer your question...
Controlling statute
The controlling statute is surfaced alongside the case law so you read the code and the precedents together.
Plain-English answer
Research memo
- Question
- Short answer
- Authorities
Casesearch shows you the sources. Always read the full opinion and verify citations before you rely on them.
What is case law search engine?
A case law search engine finds court opinions relevant to a legal question. Casesearch lets you search in plain English instead of Boolean strings, then returns on-point cases with their reporter citation, court, and year, a plain-language summary of each holding, and a treatment signal that shows whether the case is still good law. You read the sources and verify before relying on them.
Last updated July 2026
4 kinds
of case law search tool, and only two of them include a citator
Plain English
ask a full question instead of a terms and connectors string
Cite + holding
attached to every result, so verifying it is one click
$39/mo
published entry price, with no per search metering
What you get
Built for case law search engine
Every result gives you a real citation, a plain-language holding, and a still-good-law signal you can verify.
Plain-English questions, not Boolean
Ask "Can a non-compete be enforced against a remote contractor in California" instead of memorizing terms-and-connectors syntax.
Real, citable authorities
Every result is a real case with its name, reporter citation, court, and year, like Edwards v. Arthur Andersen LLP, 44 Cal.4th 937 (2008).
A holding you can read in seconds
Each result carries a one-paragraph plain-language summary of what the court actually held.
Still-good-law signal
A treatment chip flags whether a case has been followed, questioned, or overruled, so you never brief a dead precedent.
How it works
Ask, search, verify
Plain English in, cited authorities out, and you always read the opinion before you rely on it.
Step 01
Ask your question
Type the issue in plain English, with the jurisdiction if you know it.
Step 02
Casesearch scans the opinions
It reads across court opinions and ranks the cases most on point for your facts.
Step 03
Read the cited results
Each authority card shows the citation, the holding, and a treatment signal.
Step 04
Verify and export
Open the full opinion to confirm, then drop the authorities into a research memo.
How do I search case law?
Start with a question, not keywords. Write out the issue the way you would say it to a colleague, including the jurisdiction, the operative statute if there is one, the relationship between the parties, and the procedural posture. A search engine that understands natural language has far more to work with in "can a Massachusetts employer enforce a non-compete against a contractor who never worked in state" than in "non-compete AND contractor."
Then read results with three filters running. First, is this court binding on my court, or merely persuasive? Second, is the opinion published, because in many states an unpublished decision has no precedential value regardless of how well it fits. Third, is it still good law, which no amount of relevance ranking will tell you. Those three checks are what separate research from searching, and our walkthrough on how to find case law takes them one at a time.
Ask a full question
Include jurisdiction, parties, statute, and posture so the search has facts to match.
Check who binds you
Start with your own appellate court, then the highest court, then persuasive authority.
Check publication status
Unpublished decisions carry different weight and different citation rules.
Check treatment last
An on-point case that was overruled is worse than no case at all.
Is there an easy way to do legal research?
The single biggest simplification available today is dropping terms and connectors. Boolean syntax was designed for search engines that matched strings, and it made the researcher do the translation work: you had to guess which words the opinion used, then build a query with proximity operators and truncation around those guesses. Get the vocabulary wrong and a perfectly on-point case never appears, with no indication anything is missing.
Natural-language search reverses that. You describe the problem and the tool does the matching, which means you are no longer penalized for not knowing that the opinions in your area say "restrictive covenant" rather than "non-compete." Boolean still wins for a few narrow jobs, mostly when you know the exact phrase you want or need a precisely bounded result set, and we compare the two directly in Boolean versus natural language legal search. For everyday practice, describing the issue in a sentence is both faster and less likely to silently miss something.
What easy does not mean is skipping verification. Whatever gets you to the case, you still read the opinion before you rely on it. A tool that hands you a holding and a citation makes that fast rather than optional, and a tool that writes prose without sources makes it impossible.
No operator syntax to memorize
Ask the question in a sentence instead of building a proximity query.
Vocabulary mismatch stops hiding cases
You do not have to guess the phrasing the court used.
Holdings in plain language
Read what the court decided without parsing forty pages first.
Verification stays fast
The citation travels with the result, so checking it is one click.
What is the best case law research software?
It depends on which of two problems you have. If you need deep editorial apparatus, secondary sources, treatises, and the most established citators, the enterprise suites remain the reference standard and price accordingly. If you need to answer a research question, get cited authorities, and confirm they are still good law, a self-serve tool does that work at a fraction of the cost, and the gap that used to justify enterprise pricing for everyday research has narrowed considerably.
The honest test for a small firm is not which tool has more content. Nearly every tool has the published opinions. The test is what happens after you find a case: does the product tell you whether it was overruled, does it show you the holding, and can you see what you are paying before you talk to a salesperson? We compare the whole category, including the tools that disappeared in the Casetext and vLex consolidation, in the legal research software guide, and the actual price ranges in the pricing breakdown.
Coverage is table stakes
Almost every tool has the published opinions. That is not the differentiator.
A citator is not optional
Without subsequent treatment you cannot safely file.
Published pricing matters
A quote-only price usually means per seat contracts built for large firms.
Match the tool to the work
Everyday case research and deep treatise work are different purchases.
Can I search case law for free?
Yes, and you should know exactly where the free sources stop. CourtListener, Google Scholar, and Justia carry an enormous body of published opinions, and the official court sites publish authenticated text the day it is released. For reading a case you already have a citation for, they are excellent and cost nothing. Our assessment of Google Scholar for legal research goes through what it does well.
The gap is always the same one. None of the free sources runs a citator, so nothing warns you that the case you just found was reversed on appeal or superseded by statute. Most give no reliable indication of whether an intermediate appellate decision was published or issued as an unpublished summary disposition, which changes whether you can cite it at all. And none summarizes the holding, so triage means opening every result. That is fine when you are checking one case and expensive when you are working through forty. The verification layer is what you are actually paying for, and it is covered in citation checking.
Side by side
The four kinds of case law research software, and what each one leaves out
Every tool that searches opinions falls into one of four categories. They differ less in how much case law they hold than in whether they tell you the case is still good law, which is the part that decides whether you can file.
| Category | Examples | What it gives you | What it leaves out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free public archives | CourtListener, Google Scholar, Justia | Broad full text search across published opinions at no cost | No citator, no holdings, no publication status warnings |
| Official court sites | govinfo, state judiciary sites, supremecourt.gov | Authoritative, authenticated text straight from the source | Weak search, no cross-jurisdiction coverage, no treatment signals |
| Self-serve research tools | Casesearch and similar flat-rate tools | Plain-English search, cited holdings, a good-law signal, published pricing | Smaller editorial apparatus than the enterprise suites |
| Enterprise research suites | Westlaw, Lexis+ | Deep editorial headnotes, KeyCite and Shepard's, secondary sources, treatises | Per seat pricing and contracts that small firms often cannot justify |
An honest map of the category. Verify current features and pricing with each vendor before you decide.
Frequently asked
Questions about case law search engine
How do I search case law?
Write the issue as a full question including the jurisdiction, the governing statute, the relationship between the parties, and the procedural posture. Then filter results three ways: whether the deciding court binds yours, whether the opinion was published, and whether it is still good law. Relevance ranking answers none of those three.
Is there an easy way to do legal research?
The biggest simplification is natural-language search instead of terms and connectors. Describing the problem in a sentence removes the guesswork of matching the exact vocabulary an opinion used, which is the most common reason a relevant case never appears in Boolean results. Verification of what you find still cannot be skipped.
What is the best case law research software?
For deep secondary sources, treatises, and the most established citators, the enterprise suites remain the reference standard at enterprise prices. For answering research questions, getting cited authorities, and confirming they are still good law, a self-serve flat-rate tool covers the everyday work at a fraction of the cost. Match the tool to the work you actually do.
Can I search case law for free?
Yes. CourtListener, Google Scholar, Justia, and the official court sites all provide published opinions at no cost. What none of them provides is a citator, so nothing tells you the case was reversed or superseded, and most give no clear publication status. Free is fine for reading a known case and thin for research you have to file on.
What is the difference between case law search and a general search engine?
A general search engine ranks web pages about cases. A case law search engine searches the opinions themselves and returns the case with its reporter citation, deciding court, year, and holding. The difference that matters most is the treatment signal, which tells you whether the authority still stands.
Does AI case law search make up citations?
It depends entirely on the architecture. A tool that retrieves real opinions from a case law database and shows you the source is not generating citations at all, so there is nothing to fabricate. A general chatbot with no database produces citation-shaped text and does invent cases, which is why every result here carries the case name, cite, court, and year you can check.
Keep reading
How to find case law
The full research workflow, from framing the issue to verifying the case.
Boolean vs natural language
When terms and connectors still beat plain English, and when they do not.
Case summary generator
Plain-language holdings with the citation attached.
Citation check
Confirm a citation is real and the case is still good law.
Legal research software
The four kinds of research tool and how to choose between them.
Legal research software pricing
What the major tools actually cost, by tier.
Federal case law search
Circuits, districts, and what binds a federal court.
What decisions are binding in my state
How binding authority works court by court, state by state.
More of Casesearch
Court opinions search
Statute search
Precedent finder
Citation check
Case summaries
Research memo
Small law firms
Solo attorneys
Paralegals
Litigation teams
Casesearch is a legal research tool, not legal advice. Always read the full opinion and verify citations before relying on them.
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Run your next case law search engine in plain English
Get the cases, citations, and holdings that answer your question in seconds. You read the opinion and verify. A research tool, not legal advice.