CourtLink was one of Lexis’ earliest product acquisitions and it is seemingly the last to be integrated into the flagship Lexis Advance platform. Starting Monday Lexis Advance subscribers will see a host of new features and a cleaner more streamlined interface. This will be none to soon for customers.
The integration of CourtLink was a massive undertaking. The system contains over 189 million unique dockets and 36.5 milling documents. Over 100,000 new dockets are added every week. The data is now stored in a single unified database which will deliver faster search results.


LexisNexis worked with customers and tracked over 1,00 interactions to interactively tweak and optimize the system. The new CourtLink will provide seamless access, faster navigation and easier administration of alerts.

New Features include: 

  • A single unified search.
  • No more drilling down. All search features and filters are available from a single page.
  • Limit results to civil dockets
  • Filter using timeline
  • New Lexis created taxonomy allows searching for similar cases across state courts. E.g all state specific case types for Labor will be unified as labor cases.
  • Download All or selected. Checkboxes allow researchers to select and download documents in a single transaction
  • Instead of selecting dozens or hundreds of documents.
  • Link out to Lex Machina analysis of a judge.
  • Courtlink Alerts now listed with regular Lexis alerts to steamline management of alerts.
  • Limit party searches to plaintiff or defendant.

One important feature which I did not see in the new platform was the ability to limit search to a specific document type such as a “complaint.” I was assured that this feature is “in the pipeline.”

Overall there is no question that the new CourtLink will will deliver significant efficiencies to docket research. Previouly there was a laborious drill down and navivation process to search or set up an alert ( 7 pages for an alert and 5 pages for a search).

As with all legal products. The law librarian community of power searchers will continue to give feedback and advice Lexis to continue optimizing the product. But the Lexis Advance integration  alone represents a major step in the right direction.