Cycling through all six. Tap any point to stop.

Measured on six things

Free U.S. court rules, judge orders and deadline calculator

Security

HTTPS enforced with HSTS and SPF present, but only 5/12 security-header checklist points: no CSP, no frame protection, no DMARC, no Referrer-Policy. No published audits.

Screenshots

1 / 1

Court Rules

About this app

Court Rules is a free reference for U.S. federal court practice: the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, district local rules, individual judge standing orders and court holidays, organized by court. The deadline calculator counts calendar, business and court days and applies each district's holidays. A public API and an MCP server at courtrules.app/mcp serve the same data to legal-tech tools.

Key features

1Judge standing orders and district local rules, quoted with source citations to the court's own document
2Deadline calculator counting calendar, business, and court days with each district's holidays applied
3Public API and MCP server at courtrules.app/mcp for legal-tech tools and AI assistants

Target customer profile

Drawn from the product itself, not from a survey.

Demographic

Litigation attorneys and paralegals

Pain points

Difficulty finding and tracking individual judges' rules and local court rules; risk of non-compliance with filing requirements.

Primary needs

Quick access to judge-specific rules, deadline calculators, and compliance checks to avoid sanctions.

Demographic

In-house legal and compliance teams

Pain points

Staying updated on privacy enforcement actions and fines; ensuring vendor contracts align with regulations.

Primary needs

Monitoring enforcement trends, searching for relevant contract clauses, and accessing structured enforcement data.

Demographic

Legal tech developers and AI tool builders

Pain points

Lack of structured, reliable legal data to integrate into AI assistants and applications.

Primary needs

Programmatic access via API/MCP to court rules and enforcement data for building legal AI tools.

Demographic

Law students and legal researchers

Pain points

Limited access to practical court rules and enforcement data for academic or research purposes.

Primary needs

Free, searchable database of court rules and enforcement actions to study real-world legal compliance.

Scout Review

Written by AI from measured evidence, scored out of 100.

Court Rules is a free, no-sign-up reference for U.S. federal court practice that does the unglamorous work well: judge standing orders quoted with source citations, local rules organized by court, a deadline calculator that respects district holidays, and a public API plus MCP server for legal-tech builders. It is fast (Lighthouse mobile 93, desktop 100), accessible by automated measure (100/100), and free of the login walls that make legal research miserable. The gaps are the usual early-stage ones: thin security headers (5/12 checklist points, no CSP or DMARC), no published audits, no accessibility statement, and no visible documentation beyond the search box. Against CourtListener, PACER, and Trellis, its differentiator is judge-level rule extraction and programmatic access — a narrow but real wedge. It is not trying to be a research platform; it is trying to be the fastest answer to 'what does this judge require,' and it mostly is.

Measure by measure

Usability

No sign-up, instant search, keyboard shortcuts, and a deadline calculator that applies each district's holidays. Judge pages quote the rule and cite the source document directly.

Design

Clean, information-dense directory UI built for scanning: search-first hero, quoted judge rules with source citations, and court lists by circuit. Functional over flashy, but coherent.

Speed

Lighthouse mobile 93/100 (LCP 2.7s, CLS 0, TBT 44ms) and desktop 100/100. A text-and-links reference site that loads like one, with no heavy SPA tax.

Security

HTTPS enforced with HSTS and SPF present, but only 5/12 security-header checklist points: no CSP, no frame protection, no DMARC, no Referrer-Policy. No published audits.

Accessibility

Lighthouse accessibility 100/100, with clear heading structure and descriptive link text throughout. No published a11y statement or multi-language support found.

Growth

Real, sanction-level pain (judge-specific rules), a specific wedge (judge-level extraction + API/MCP for legal AI), and a category with headroom. Early stage, but the idea holds.

Improvement areas

Security headers incomplete (5/12): no CSP, frame protection, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, or DMARC
No published accessibility statement, WCAG conformance claim, or multi-language support
No visible documentation or help center for the API, MCP server, or deadline-calculator methodology

Design & Usability

Court Rules is built like a reference desk, not a landing page: a search bar, popular courts, judge standing orders quoted with source citations, and a full federal court list by circuit. That density is the point — a litigator needs Judge Failla's courtesy-copy rule in seconds, not a scroll through marketing. Usability backs it up: the site is free with no sign-up, search accepts natural-language questions about a judge's rules, and keyboard shortcuts (Enter, Control+Enter) speed up navigation. The deadline calculator counts calendar, business, and court days and applies each district's holidays, which is the kind of detail that separates a real tool from a rules PDF dump. The weak spot is depth of help content — no visible docs or onboarding beyond the search box, so new users learn by clicking. Against CourtListener and PACER, the judge-level rule extraction is the differentiator, and it shows in the design.

Speed & Security

Speed is a genuine strength. Lighthouse mobile scores 93/100 with LCP 2.7s, CLS 0, TBT 44ms, and FCP 1.7s; desktop hits a perfect 100/100. For a text-and-links reference site, that is exactly what you want — no heavy SPA framework taxing a page whose job is to show you a rule. Security is the softer side. HTTPS is enforced with HSTS, SPF is present, and the basics are in place, but the header probe found only 5/12 checklist points: no Content-Security-Policy, no frame protection, no X-Content-Type-Options, no Referrer-Policy, no Permissions-Policy, and no DMARC. There is also no published SOC 2, ISO, pen-test, or bug bounty. For a free public reference with no accounts or payments, that is not alarming — there is little to breach — but a legal audience notices missing DMARC and CSP, and adding them is cheap.

Accessibility & Growth

Accessibility is strong on the automated side: Lighthouse scores 100/100, and the fetched content shows disciplined heading structure and descriptive link labels rather than 'click here' soup. What is missing is the paperwork — no accessibility statement, no WCAG conformance claim, no multi-language support. For a U.S. federal court reference, English-only is defensible, but a public a11y statement would cost nothing and signal intent. Growth is the more interesting question. The problem is real and expensive: missing a judge's individual standing order can draw sanctions, and those rules are scattered across court websites and PDFs. The wedge is specific — judge-level rule extraction, a deadline calculator that applies district holidays, and a public API plus MCP server that feeds the same data into legal AI tools. That last piece is the smart bet: as legal-tech builders need structured court data, a free, citable source becomes infrastructure. The category has headroom, though CourtListener and Trellis already own adjacent ground, and the moat is 'we did the boring extraction work' — defensible only as long as the extraction stays current.

Conclusion

If you litigate in federal court, bookmark it before your next reply brief. The judge pages alone justify the tab — quoted rules with citations beat hunting through a district website's PDF maze at 11pm. The deadline calculator is the sleeper feature: district-specific holidays are exactly the detail that turns a missed filing into a sanctions motion. For legal-tech developers, the MCP server and API are the real story — structured court rules are scarce, and a free, citable source is worth wiring into your stack. The caveats are honest ones: verify anything critical against the court's own document (the site links to it, which is the right instinct), and don't expect enterprise compliance paperwork. It is a free reference tool that respects your time, and in legal research, that is rarer than it should be.

Suggestions for improvement

Add a Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, and DMARC record — cheap wins that matter to a legal audience.
Publish a short accessibility statement with a WCAG 2.1 AA conformance claim; the automated score already supports it.
Add visible documentation or a help page explaining the API, MCP server, and deadline-calculator methodology.
Show a 'last verified' date on each judge and local-rule page so users can judge freshness at a glance.

How we score

Alternatives comparison

Named competitors, point by point. Nobody paid to appear here or to be left out.

	Court Rules	CourtListener	PACER	Trellis
Judge-specific standing orders and individual practices	Yes — judge pages quote standing orders with source citations	Limited — focuses on opinions and dockets, not judge filing rules	No — official docket and filing system, no structured judge rules	Partial — judge analytics for state trial courts, not standing orders
Deadline calculator with district-specific court holidays	Yes — calendar, business, and court days with district holidays	No — research platform, no deadline calculator	No — docket access only	No — analytics and research, no deadline tooling
Public API / MCP server for legal-tech integration	Yes — public API and MCP server at courtrules.app/mcp	Yes — free REST API for opinions and dockets	Limited — paid access, no modern developer API	Limited — API access not a primary offering
Pricing and access model	Free, no sign-up required	Free with optional donations	Per-page fees for docket access	Paid subscription for research platform
Enforcement actions and privacy fines data	Yes — privacy fines and settlements by agency and violation	No — court opinions and dockets only	No — federal court records only	No — state trial court research only