What is DocketDB?
DocketDB analyzes the Texas Supreme Court’s active docket, highlighting the petitions that have lingered long enough to be candidates for the Court’s “submarine” docket or to be set for oral orgument. DocketDB also tracks amicus filings and attorney appearances, so you can flexibly search to see which cases have drawn the most interest, and from whom. These tools are designed to let you see across the Court’ docket.
Being able to see these other petitions can give you important strategic insights into your own cases, and it can help you decide which issues to pursue in your own trial.
DocketDB is a tool to help you make better strategic choices. How you use it is up to you.
“Court Information, Remixed”
The information at the heart of DocketDB is not proprietary. It is the real case information used and published by the courts.
What's special about DocketDB is the way that information is analyzed, recombined, and presented. The courts' raw information is now woven together with news articles and legal blog posts. And each case in DocketDB can be supplemented with annotations and tags, curated by users and sponsoring law firms, that can help shed light on what is happening in the courts — before the opinions are set in stone.
As more court information goes online, tools like DocketDB can help you make smarter decisions about legal strategy.
Built By a Lawyer for Lawyers
DocketDB was started by Don Cruse, a Texas appellate lawyer who has spent a substantial portion of his practice studying the Texas Supreme Court. It began as a set of tools to answer simple questions, such as "Which petitions have been pending the longest?" and "Which cases are drawing amicus attention?"
Over time, he turned those tools into something that other lawyers could use to analyze the docket for their clients.