Court Rules Has Rules in Counties With 43 Percent of U.S. Residents

As of October 5, 2026, Court Rules has at least one extracted rule in each of 138 state trial-court listings in 27 states. The counties served by those courts held 143.2 million residents in the 2020 Census, or 43.2 percent of the 331.4 million residents of the 50 states and DC. This measures where we have some rules. Coverage of judges, divisions and subjects within those counties varies.

On August 21 we announced 27 state trial-court listings. All 27 still have rules on the site, and 111 more listings now have rules. On the federal side, individual judges' rules are on the site for 19 of the 94 district courts.

What you can do in one visit

A court page lists the judges and rules we have collected, grouped by topic: page limits, courtesy copies, e-filing and more. For 106 of the 157 state and federal listings with rules it also shows published 2026 court holiday dates. A judge page shows the requirements extracted from that judge's listed documents, with the source wording and a link to the document. Each rule carries a status that explains its automated checks, described below. The page also gives a document-check date, which is when we last fetched the court's documents and compared them with its website. We check about once a month. On the four judge pages used below, that date was October 3, 2026 when we looked on October 5.

Courtesy copies show why that matters, because the answer changes from one courtroom to the next. The Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County, Nevada lists 58 judges on Court Rules, and 55 have individual rules. Judge Erika Mendoza's Department 27 requires paper:

Judge Christy Craig's Department 32, in the same court, says this:

Check your assigned department and case type. These two describe the instructions each department publishes.

Page limits differ the same way. The Circuit Court of Cook County lists 400 judges on Court Rules, and 100 have individual rules. Judge Caroline Kate Moreland's Calendar 10 standing order says, "There is a 15-page limit on all motions and response briefs. There is a 10-page limit on reply briefs. These page limits include all supporting memoranda, and exclude any supporting exhibits." Going over takes leave of court on a written motion with good cause. Judge Michael F. Otto's Law Division Calendar R order sets 15 pages for initial and opposition briefs, excluding exhibits, and 7 for replies, absent leave of court.

Court closures differ too. Clark County's 2026 list includes Nevada Day on Friday, October 30. In the deadline calculator, type the court's name to pick it. For a period measured in court days, 10 court days after Monday, October 26, 2026 end on Tuesday, November 10 in Clark County, because the count skips the starting day, weekends and Nevada Day. Without Nevada Day they would end on Monday, November 9. Use the counting method your rule or order requires. Cook County's published 2026 holiday schedule includes Lincoln's Birthday and Casimir Pulaski Day, neither of which is a federal holiday.

All 94 federal district court pages link to the district's own local rules on its website. Separately, 19 districts have individual judges' rules extracted on Court Rules. A link is not the same as having the rules on the site.

Every rule carries a status line. "Checked against the court's document" and "Checked and corrected to match the court's document" come with a date and mean the automated check passed the summary or fixed it. "The quote is in the court's document. The summary is not checked yet." means we found the wording but have not checked our summary of it. "Machine summary. Not checked yet." means no check is recorded. Two lines are warnings: "Not confirmed. Read the court's wording below." and "We could not find this wording in the court's document. Open the source before relying on it."

Each court also has a changes page, and an Atom feed covers every court. They list selected PDF revisions we detected during scheduled checks in the last 180 days, with the new copy and the one it replaced. A new version does not always change a rule, and a court may have posted it before the date we show.

The other number

Our state trial-court listings serve 155 of the 3,143 counties and county equivalents used in the 2020 Census. Those counties account for 4.9 percent of that county list and 43.2 percent of its resident population.

Individual judges' rules are available in 19 of the 94 federal districts, about 20 percent. Of those 19, the 18 other than the Eastern District of Virginia contained 37.6 percent of the U.S. resident population in the 2020 Census. We left out Eastern Virginia because we have not completed its county-and-independent-city mapping. This is residence within district boundaries, not the share of federal litigation served, and it does not add to the state figure.

Our coverage is concentrated in populous counties. Of the 50 largest, 46 have at least one state trial-court listing with rules, and so do 76 of the top 100. Outside the top 100, that is 79 of 3,043 counties, or 2.5 percent. Among the top 50, the four counties without such coverage are Middlesex County in Massachusetts, Salt Lake County in Utah, and Wake and Mecklenburg counties in North Carolina. No state trial-court listing has rules in 23 states or DC.

Depth varies. Of the 138 state trial-court listings, 54 have rules filed under the court and no individual judge's rules. Across all 138 listings we list 3,434 active judges, and 1,445 have at least one individual rule. Counties served by listings with some individual judges' rules held 107.8 million residents in 2020, or 32.5 percent of the U.S. total. Some listings are thin. The median has 377 rules, and 9 have fewer than 50.

Why adding a court takes time

Court websites publish rosters and documents in different formats, so adding a court requires checking how its site is organized. Our Rock Island collector reads a shared judges' directory. Our Colorado 18th District collector reads judge contact cards and court-level orders. Some judge pages in Florida's Fifth Circuit label their documents "CLICK HERE," so our collector reads the file names to tell what each one is. We configure a collector for each court and test its roster and document links, and a site redesign can require changes.

A model extracts rule summaries and source wording from the documents we collect. Automated checks compare that wording with the stored document and assess the summary and the extracted values. In the October 5, 2026 snapshot, 80,640 of 141,840 rules had a recorded check result. Of those, 52,391 passed or were repaired, and 28,249 were marked for review. The other 61,200 had no recorded check result. These checks assess the extraction. They do not establish that a rule applies to your case. In September we wrote about how the checker works.

Collecting documents and checking their extraction are separate tasks. We are adding courts while we keep checking the rules already on the site, and we think a wrong date is worse than a missing court, so every rule says what we have and have not checked. Read the source document and confirm that its court, judge, case type and dates apply before you use a requirement. Since August 21, the number of state trial-court listings with rules has grown by 111 in 45 days. Another 2,988 counties in the 2020 Census list have no state trial-court listing with rules here.

What to expect next

Our next priorities use search demand, page use and court size, alongside gaps in the rules we have collected. Planned work is described below. A configured source counts as coverage only after we have collected rules from it.

• More state trial courts, and fuller coverage of the ones we have, using population, search demand and page use to set priorities. That includes the courts' own local rules in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Harris, Maricopa, St. Louis County and Wayne, which are configured and wait for the next monthly state run.
• Searchable local rules from more federal districts. Official local-rule links are already on all 94 district pages. Collection is configured for nine more districts whose rules are not in our coverage count yet: M.D. Fla., E.D. Mich., D. Mass., D. Ariz., E.D. La., N.D. Ohio, N.D. Ga., D. Md. and S.D. Ohio. The next monthly federal run is scheduled to collect them.
• Email alerts for detected document changes. The change pages and the Atom feed are available now.
• More checks. Of the 141,840 rules, 61,200 have no recorded check result, and the 28,249 marked for review need a second look.
• Expanded 2027 court calendars. The planned additions are not in the published data yet, so check the court's own 2027 schedule before you calculate a deadline.

Look up your court and judge in the state court directory or the federal court directory, and read the source document for the requirement you need. A county with some rules on Court Rules may still lack your court, division or judge. Developers can retrieve extracted rules and source links through the API.

To ask for a court, email us the court's name and county.