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Court Rules Linter API

In May 2021, a firm filed a summary judgment motion in EDNY. The court killed it — not on the merits. The attorney filed papers before briefing was complete, violating page 3 of a 6-page standing order PDF. Same courthouse, different judge: one requires a tabbed binder with double-sided printing. The other doesn’t want paper at all. But your brief is 6 pages over their limit. The Court Rules Linter API catches that. Deterministically. Every time.

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What it does

Given a document’s metadata (page count, word count, structural elements) and filing context (which judge, what type of motion), the API checks compliance against three layers of rules:
  1. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) — 15 rules covering signatures, captions, privacy redactions, motion requirements
  2. Local Rules — District-wide rules covering formatting, page/word limits, timing, and district-specific procedures
  3. Standing Orders — Judge-specific rules for page limits, courtesy copies, pre-motion conferences, filing gates, and bundling requirements
The same 31-page brief gets completely different results depending on which judge you’re filing with. Judge Amon has no page limit issue but requires courtesy copies in a tabbed binder. Judge Block rejects it outright — 31 pages exceeds his 25-page limit. See the Same Document, Different Judge guide for the full walkthrough.

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Key characteristics

  • Deterministic — No LLM at check time. Same input always produces the same output. Sub-millisecond response times.
  • Graduated input — Only page_count and word_count are required. Provide more document structure fields to get more checks.
  • Three rule layers — FRCP (national), Local Rules (district), Standing Orders (judge-specific). Every result cites its source.
  • Authenticated — All endpoints require a Bearer token. See Authentication.

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Current coverage

MetricCount
Federal districts mapped94
Districts with judge data20
Live districts (full API access)1 (EDNY)
EDNY judges47
Full standing order profiles3 (Amon, Block, Brown)
Curated rules38 (15 FRCP + 23 EDNY Local Rules)

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Example

curl -X POST https://api.courtrules.app/api/v1/check \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "judge_slug": "gary-r-brown",
    "district_id": "edny",
    "document_scope": "brief_support",
    "motion_type": "Rule_56",
    "document": {
      "page_count": 22,
      "word_count": 7200
    }
  }'

{
  "summary": {
    "status": "NON_COMPLIANT",
    "failures": 1,
    "warnings": 0,
    "passes": 1,
    "action_items": 3
  },
  "results": [
    {
      "severity": "CRITICAL",
      "category": "PAGE_LIMIT",
      "message": "22 pages exceeds 20-page limit",
      "source": "Brown SO §2.B",
      "status": "FAIL"
    },
    {
      "severity": "INFO",
      "category": "WORD_LIMIT",
      "message": "7,200 words within 8,750-word limit",
      "source": "EDNY LR 7.1(c)",
      "status": "PASS"
    }
  ]
}