Court Rules — Searchable Database of US Judges' Rules and Standing Orders

What is Court Rules?

Court Rules (courtrules.app) is a web database that aggregates the scattered, hard-to-find documents US litigators deal with daily: judges' individual practices and standing orders, local rules from federal and state courts, and privacy-enforcement actions from the FTC, HHS/HIPAA, and state attorneys general. Coverage spans federal district courts across all circuits, state court resource pages, and — per the site's own banner — "a trial court in 1 of every 10 U.S. counties."

The product is operated by Court Rules Inc. (© 2026) and is explicit about what it is not: "Not legal advice. Confirm with the court's source." It positions itself as the research layer between a court's published PDFs and the lawyer, paralegal, or AI assistant that needs the answer quickly.

How Court Rules Works

The primary interaction is search: by judge, court, or rule topic — things like page limits, courtesy copies, pre-motion conferences, and sealing. A lookup returns the rule text with a citation linking to the exact page of the court's source PDF, so the answer can be verified against the original before filing. Users can also run rules-by-topic comparisons across courts and judges.

For AI-assisted workflows, Court Rules exposes an MCP server and a REST API. The MCP endpoint plugs into Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and Codex CLI, letting a coding or legal AI assistant query a judge's rules in place. API access requires an account at console.courtrules.app (Google or email sign-in) that issues a non-expiring API key. The site also states enforcement events appear in its tracker "within 24-48 hours of the official government announcement."

Main Features

• Judge and court rule search — look up individual practices, standing orders, and local rules by judge, court, or topic.
• Citation-linked sources — every rule links to the exact page of the court's source PDF for verification.
• Rules-by-topic comparisons — compare how different courts and judges handle the same topic.
• Deadline calculators — court-day and business-day computations that respect federal rules and holidays.
• Court holiday calendars — closure calendars for scheduling filings and hearings.
• Privacy-enforcement tracker — FTC, HHS/HIPAA, and state AG enforcement actions with fines, violation types, laws cited, and contract-search terms mapped to clause gaps.
• PDF compliance checks — upload a filing and get pass/fail results against the assigned judge's rules.
• MCP server and REST API — programmatic access for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Codex CLI, and custom integrations.

Pricing

Browsing the database is free and requires no sign-up. API and MCP access require an account created at console.courtrules.app, which issues a non-expiring API key. No plan tiers, prices, or usage limits for API access are published on the reviewed page, so commercial or heavy programmatic use presumably requires contacting the operator — the pricing model beyond free browsing is not stated.

Common Use Cases

• Pre-filing checks — confirming a judge's page limits, courtesy-copy requirements, or pre-motion conference rules before a submission.
• Deadline computation — calculating court-day and business-day deadlines with holiday awareness.
• Vendor privacy review — in-house counsel scanning the enforcement tracker when assessing vendors' privacy agreements.
• AI-assisted legal research — wiring the MCP endpoint into Claude or Cursor so an assistant answers rule questions with citation-backed data.
• Cross-court comparison — comparing how judges in the same district handle a procedural topic.

Limitations

The site carries a standing disclaimer — "Not legal advice. Confirm with the court's source" — and its verification model has edges: rules are re-verified only when judges update their practices, so a stale entry is possible until the judge's office revises a document. State trial-court coverage is explicitly partial (roughly one county in ten by the site's own count), so litigators in uncovered counties still need the court's website. Enforcement tracker timeliness is 24-48 hours behind official announcements. API/MCP pricing and usage limits are unpublished, and the compliance checker's pass/fail output is a screening aid rather than a court-accepted validation.

Summary

Court Rules turns one of litigation's most tedious chores — hunting down a specific judge's standing order and trusting you found the current version — into a searchable, citation-linked lookup with deadline tooling and an AI-native API. The free, sign-up-free browsing and the MCP integration for Claude, Cursor, and similar tools make it easy to adopt incrementally. Its honest limitations — partial state coverage, verification lag behind judges' own updates, and unpublished API pricing — mean it should be treated as a fast first stop whose answers get confirmed against the court's source PDF before anything is filed.