Federal and state civil courts
Many layers, few connections
- NY State alone has over 2,000 courts
- Most courts are not connected
- Many courts are offline
What challenges are involved in collecting court data?
1. Diversity of State Court Systems
From a data perspective, the US court system is a disorganized mess. The states have different multilayered court systems.
2. Imprecise Naming Conventions
Much confusion has resulted from imprecise terms and the lack of naming conventions. For example, some states will refer to their circuit courts as superior courts, while others identify them as county or district courts.
3. Inaccessibility
Court websites will often go down for months at a time. Some sites, like New Jersey, actually shut down at night! Many sites even use antiquated technology from the last century (like WordPerfect!).
4. Disorganized Data
The courts use vastly different ways to organize and categorize their data (even those running on the same software). Hundreds of courts even use duplicated case numbers.
Premonition is the only company to get close to downloading and normalizing court data on a nationally searchable, real-time basis.
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Contact us to learn more about our court data offerings.