When UniCourt was based in 2014 to offer entry to court docket knowledge and analytics, APIs have been an afterthought, cofounder Josh Blandi now says. The corporate’s authentic focus was on constructing an software to offer legislation companies and others with quick access to federal and state court docket information. However quickly prospects have been asking for API entry to the information, and UniCourt responded, creating its first-generation set of APIs and releasing them in 2017.
However as prospects’ use of the APIs elevated over the subsequent three years, Blandi got here to comprehend that the corporate has made a mistake in modeling the APIs on its software as an alternative of taking an API-first strategy to their growth, thereby limiting the APIs’ flexibility and performance for the vary of makes use of prospects needed. Thus, in 2020, UniCourt went again to the drafting board, devoting greater than 100 engineers and almost three years of effort to rebuilding the APIs from the bottom up.
“We adopted an API-first methodology, which implies our focus was to create APIs first and permit a platform that’s versatile sufficient to accommodate an array of various use circumstances after which permit folks to construct functions and services off of that, relatively than attempting to imitate the constraints of our software,” Blandi informed me.
Now, UniCourt has revealed the fruits of that labor, asserting the provision of the brand new UniCourt Enterprise API. which the corporate says represents a major development in comparison with different APIs accessible to the authorized market and is authorized tech’s solely API-first suite of entry factors into complete, real-time state and federal court docket knowledge.
“The UniCourt Enterprise API is purpose-built to automate the invention and supply of structured authorized knowledge and analytics, empowering enterprise growth, litigation technique, docket administration, and far more,” the corporate mentioned in asserting the brand new API.
“We’re now an API firm,” Blandi mentioned.
Courtroom Knowledge and Analytics
The brand new providing offers two main APIs:
- Courtroom Knowledge API, which incorporates knowledge from federal and state courts, permitting customers to conduct pure language searches and terms-and-connectors searches throughout court docket knowledge and associated entities.
- Authorized Analytics API, which incorporates endpoints which can be used to entry the outcomes of UniCourt’s analytics, enabling customers to generate actionable insights from UniCourt’s authorized knowledge. These embody analytics on attorneys, legislation companies, judges, events and circumstances.
![](https://www.lawnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/UniCourtAPIdocumentation-1024x605.png)
UniCourt offers in depth documentation that features pattern code, a Python library, quick-start guides, a data base, and tutorials.
The APIs are designed to offer a plug-and-play structure that makes it straightforward for legislation companies and different prospects to deal with an array of makes use of circumstances. Extensive documentation consists of pattern code, a Python library, quick-start guides, a data base, and tutorials to be used circumstances corresponding to find out how to determine a legislation agency’s prime case sort or prime attorneys.
Blandi believes {that a} key differentiator of UniCourt’s analytics is the trouble the corporate has put into entity normalization throughout differing types and units of court docket knowledge — that’s, correcting for variations and errors in syntax, nomenclature and spelling to make sure consistency throughout all references to a selected lawyer, choose or celebration.
“It’s very powerful to construct analytics you can belief and depend on,” Blandi mentioned. “Over the past a number of years, we spent a ton of effort on constructing out this entity normalization, which we consider now could be finest at school.”
Basis for Growth
The work that has gone into constructing these APIs will type the muse for the corporate’s future enlargement, because it provides new APIs to fulfill buyer wants. It at the moment has some 160 API endpoints, and Blandi mentioned that may attain over 300 endpoints throughout the subsequent two years.
“We take a variety of suggestions from purchasers. Simply think about, a shopper says, ‘We’re actually in search of this final result in a docket or occasion,’ or ‘We’re in search of this kind of info that’s present in paperwork; we wish you to construction it.’ No drawback, we will make an API endpoint after which let actually everybody eat that.”
UniCourt’s main market is bigger legislation companies which can be utilizing the information for enterprise growth, litigation technique and docket administration. Lately, it has additionally come for use by numerous insurance coverage firms, Blandi mentioned.
Quite a few authorized tech firms are additionally prospects, he mentioned.
“One thing that’s vital to focus on is that, in constructing these APIs, we envision an open ecosystem that permits all people to return in and plug into these knowledge units, pull them out, and be capable to use them in progressive methods, whether or not it’s internally, whether or not they wish to construct services. Our license on the information is about innovation and about desirous to have an ecosystem that’s pushed off of this kind of knowledge for many who can use it.”
Blandi believes these new APIs will assist drive a surge inside legislation companies of how they use this knowledge and what they construct with it. Corporations that depend on legacy merchandise are restricted by the product’s use case and meant viewers, he mentioned. However for companies that spend money on the infrastructure to ingest third-party knowledge by means of an API, “there’s actually no restrict to what they will do with it.”
As with every supplier of court docket knowledge and analytics, accessing and accumulating state court docket knowledge is a problem. Whereas PACER makes federal court docket knowledge simply accessible and standardized, state courts differ from state to state and even generally from court docket to court docket in what knowledge is out there and the way it’s structured.
Blandi mentioned that UniCourt’s state court docket protection now consists of between 1,200-1,300 courts in 13 states. By the tip of the 12 months, it’s going to cowl 1,500 courts and can embody the courts that serve some 70% of the U.S. inhabitants.
“We expect what we’re doing is admittedly foundational,” Blandi mentioned. “I imply, our mission is admittedly about making court docket knowledge extra organized, accessible and helpful for everybody. We simply occur to be concentrating on legislation companies and insurance coverage firms proper now. However it actually is about for everybody.”