docketbird_fulltext_search
Read-onlyIdempotent
Search the body text of court filings across all US courts and cases. Find documents matching specific terms, phrases, or legal citations.
Instructions
Full-text search of the BODIES of court filings across DocketBird's entire document index — all courts, all cases, not just your account.
This searches what the filings actually say, not what they are titled. To
match docket-entry titles within one case, use docketbird_search_documents.
When to use:
- Scanning recent filings for a company, industry, or legal topic
(e.g. new suits naming a target company — set sort='recency')
- Finding every filing whose text mentions a term, phrase, or citation
- Practice research inside your firm's own cases (set my_cases_only=True)
Scope boundary: with my_cases_only=False (default) this is cross-corpus
RESEARCH over public court records. With my_cases_only=True it is limited
to cases associated with your firm's account (resolved from your API key).
Query syntax:
- space / and: all terms must appear. or: either term.
- -term: exclude (the word 'not' is NOT supported).
- term* or term!: word endings (end of word only).
- /n, /s, /p: terms within n words / same sentence / same paragraph.
- "...": exact phrase. Email addresses and legal symbols (§, ¶) work.
Pagination contract (upstream cursors, bounded requests):
- next_cursor is the ONLY end-of-results signal. A page may hold fewer
than `size` documents — even zero — while more remain, because
restricted documents are removed after matching. Keep following the
cursor until it is null. The 'found' count may include documents that
will never be returned. Result window is the first 10,000 matches —
narrow with court_id/case_id/dates if you need the deep tail.
Args:
query: Full-text query (max 500 chars), e.g. '"summary judgment" and forfeit* -insurance'
court_id: Comma-separated court restriction; each entry may be a slug
('nysd'), an abbreviation ('S.D.N.Y.'), or a full court name.
case_id: Restrict to a single case by DocketBird case ID.
filed_after: Only documents filed on/after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
filed_before: Only documents filed on/before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
my_cases_only: True = only your firm's cases (practice scope);
False = the whole corpus (research/marketing scope).
sort: 'relevance' (default) or 'recency' (most recently filed first).
size: Results per page (default 25, max 50).
cursor: Pagination cursor from a previous response's next-page note.
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| size | No | ||
| sort | No | relevance | |
| query | Yes | ||
| cursor | No | ||
| case_id | No | ||
| court_id | No | ||
| filed_after | No | ||
| filed_before | No | ||
| my_cases_only | No |
Output Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| result | Yes |