How to Look Up Court Records: Federal, State, and County Search Steps

Finding a specific court record starts with one question most guides skip: which court system actually has it. Federal courts, state courts, and county clerk offices are three separate systems with three separate search tools, and a search that comes back empty in one usually just means you started in the wrong place.

This page walks through the process in order: identifying the right system, searching PACER for a federal case, searching your state's portal, falling back to the county clerk when there's no portal or the search comes up empty, understanding what you're actually looking at once you find something, and getting a certified copy when you need one.

Information last verified on 2026-08-10. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Step 1: Figure Out Which Court System Has the Record

Before searching anything, work out whether the case is federal, state, or (in some states) something searched only at the county level.

It's likely federal if it involves a federal crime, bankruptcy, a federal civil-rights claim, a patent or federal-statute dispute, or a civil suit between residents of different states over a large enough dollar amount. Federal cases are searched on PACER, described in Step 2.

It's likely state for the large majority of criminal cases, family law, probate, personal injury, contract disputes, and small claims. State cases are searched through whatever your state actually runs, described in Step 3, which the court records by state table names for all 50 states and DC.

If you're not sure, start with the state where the underlying event happened. If that search finds nothing and you suspect a federal angle, PACER's Case Locator can search nationwide federal courts by party name in one pass, without needing to know which specific district.

Step 2: Search Federal Records on PACER

PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is the federal judiciary's own access system, covering district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts nationwide, with "instantaneous access to more than 1 billion documents." Registration is free; the fees apply to what you retrieve.

Cost structure. $0.10 per page, capped at $3.00 per document for case documents, docket sheets, and case-specific reports. Transcripts are not subject to that cap. Audio files cost $2.40 each. There is no fee to print or save what you've already retrieved. No fee is owed until an account holder accrues charges of more than $30.00 in a quarterly billing cycle, so charges of $30.00 or less are waived entirely, and PACER's own materials state that roughly 75 percent of account holders don't pay a fee in a given quarter.

When you don't know the court. PACER's Case Locator searches nationwide by party name and generates "a listing of nationwide court locations and case numbers where a party is involved in federal litigation," instead of requiring you to guess which district or circuit.

A free alternative for part of the archive. RECAP, maintained by the nonprofit Free Law Project through CourtListener, mirrors "tens of millions of PACER documents," including every free opinion in PACER, made available at no cost. It's a crowd-sourced archive built from documents other users have already purchased and contributed through a free browser extension, so its coverage of any specific case is not guaranteed to be complete, but it is worth checking before paying for a document PACER would otherwise charge for.

Step 3: Search Your State's Portal

The court records by state table names the actual system for all 50 states and DC. Before searching, note two things about that state's entry: whether it's free or charges per search, and what it structurally excludes (a specific county, a case type, or documents older than a stated cutoff date).

Search fields vary by state but follow a common pattern. Most portals support both a party-name search and a case-number search. Pennsylvania's UJS Portal, for example, supports "case number, participant name, organization name, offense tracking number, police incident or complaint number, or state ID number." If you have a case number from a court notice, letter, or prior filing, use it; it's more reliable than a name search.

Coverage cutoffs are common and easy to miss. Several state portals only cover records from a specific date forward. Missouri's Case.net, for instance, only shows documents filed on or after July 1, 2023, remotely; anything older requires a courthouse public-access terminal. Alaska's CourtView has no comprehensive coverage before 1990. Check your state's own page in the table for its specific cutoff before assuming a search finding nothing means no record exists.

Step 4: Go to the County Clerk When There's No Portal (or the Portal Shows Nothing)

A meaningful number of states, including California, Texas, Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee, have no statewide case-search portal at all; records are held and searched at the county (or, in California, individual Superior Court) level. Even in states that do run a statewide tool, some of the busiest counties opt out and run their own separate system instead, as Washington's King, Pierce, and Kitsap Counties do.

When you need to go to the county clerk, gather what you have before contacting or visiting: the full name of the party involved, an approximate filing date if you have one, the case type (criminal, civil, family, probate), and a case number if you already have one. Most clerk of court offices can search their own case-management system directly even when there's no public online portal for that county at all.

Step 5: Reading What You Find (Index vs. Document Images)

Not every search result gives you the same thing. Some portals show only a docket or index entry, a chronological list of what happened in the case and when, without the underlying filed documents themselves. New Jersey's paid bulk-access program is explicit about this limit: subscribers get "a list of documents filed in the case," orders, and status information, but "the information excludes actual text or images of filed documents." Other portals, like Minnesota's MCRO, go further and make some of the filed documents themselves available online, not just the index.

If a search result gives you only an index entry and you need the actual document, that generally means requesting it from the clerk of the court, sometimes for a per-page copying fee, rather than expecting to view it online.

When the Portal Shows Nothing: Courthouse Terminals and Records Requests

If a search turns up nothing anywhere online, three explanations are far more common than the record not existing: you searched the wrong system (state versus federal, or the wrong county), the record predates that system's electronic coverage, or the case type is public but structurally excluded from online access by rule (family law, juvenile, and mental-health cases are the most common examples).

Courthouse public-access terminals exist in nearly every state, typically free, and let you view records the public is entitled to see even where remote online access is restricted. Kansas's own portal notice states this directly: only case information "the public is legally allowed to view online" is displayed remotely, while "additional case information permitted by law can be viewed at a courthouse terminal."

A direct request to the clerk of the court is the fallback when a terminal isn't practical, particularly for older or non-digitized records.

If what you're actually looking for is a government record that isn't a court case at all, for example a police incident report or agency correspondence, that's a different system entirely: a state public-records or FOIA request. See public records laws by state for that separate process; judicial records are governed by the courts' own rules, not a state's FOIA statute.

Getting a Certified Copy

Every online portal is a convenience tool, not the official record, and nearly all of them say so explicitly. A certified copy, the kind accepted for legal, employment, licensing, or immigration purposes, has to come from the clerk of the specific court where the case was filed. Fees are typically small and per-page or per-document; expect a modest additional charge for the certification itself. If you're not sure which court has custody of the case, the court records by state page for that state names the real system and, where relevant, the certified-copy process.

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about the mechanics of locating court records in the United States. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for consulting a licensed attorney about your specific situation. Fees, coverage windows, and portal names described here reflect their published status as of 2026-08-10 and change over time; always confirm current details directly with the relevant court.

Last updated: 2026-08-10. Portal facts and fees reflect their published status as of August 2026.