How Docket Navigator turns litigation records into structured data and how libraries, searches, profiles, analytics, binders, alerts, publications, and AI-connected research work together.
Docket Navigator is a litigation research and intelligence platform built on structured litigation data.
Court records contain the underlying facts of a case, but many litigation questions are difficult to answer by reading dockets or searching document text alone. Docket Navigator adds a structured layer to those records so users can search, count, compare, monitor, and analyze litigation activity across cases.
The majority of Docket Navigator’s data is hand-coded by licensed U.S. attorneys. Court orders are read and recorded across up to 29 data fields, and docket activity is reviewed and classified. Those fields are organized through Docket Navigator taxonomies and relationships, then used by searches, profiles, analytics, alerts, publications, and connected AI tools.
The Docket Navigator research model
Section titled “The Docket Navigator research model”A useful way to understand Docket Navigator is as a sequence:
- Source records provide the underlying complaints, docket entries, pleadings, orders, decisions, and other litigation documents.
- Structured data describes those records using normalized fields, entities, relationships, and legal taxonomies.
- Human curation adds analysis, tagging, and annotations from Docket Navigator’s attorney editors.
- Filters and searches select the records relevant to a research question.
- Profiles and analytics organize or summarize those records for a subject or question.
- Binders keep related research together as a persistent working set.
- Alerts and publications monitor new activity using the same underlying data.
- AI-connected research can use Docket Navigator tools and structured data from a compatible AI provider platform.
The same concepts recur throughout the product. Understanding how the data is scoped and filtered is therefore more important than memorizing a particular screen.
Structured legal data and taxonomies
Section titled “Structured legal data and taxonomies”Docket Navigator records litigation information in fields that can be searched and analyzed individually or in combination. Depending on the library and record type, those fields can describe the case, court, judge, parties, firms, attorneys, intellectual-property assets, document type, procedural posture, result, legal issue, outcome, remedy, timing, and other characteristics.
Several taxonomies are especially important.
Type of Document
Section titled “Type of Document”Type of Document identifies what kind of filing, motion, order, or other document is involved. The taxonomy contains hundreds of document and motion types.
Use document type when the research question is about a category of filings or rulings, including questions that require counting all processed orders on a particular motion type.
Legal Issue
Section titled “Legal Issue”Legal Issue identifies substantive reasoning or analysis of a procedural or substantive legal concept. Docket Navigator’s Legal Issue taxonomy contains more than 1,600 legal concepts.
A Legal Issue is attached when the court’s decision contains substantive discussion of that issue. This makes Legal Issue useful when the research question is about the court’s reasoning rather than every ruling of a particular document type.
Posture of Motion
Section titled “Posture of Motion”Posture of Motion describes the procedural status or process in effect when a motion was presented, such as a motion by a party or a sua sponte action.
Posture can distinguish contested decisions from stipulated or otherwise procedurally different events when that distinction matters to the research question.
Combining structured criteria
Section titled “Combining structured criteria”The value of the structured model comes from combining fields. A user can ask for a narrow slice of litigation activity, such as:
- decisions by a particular judge on a specified type of motion;
- contested motions to stay pending IPR in a particular court;
- summary judgment decisions addressing a specified legal issue;
- cases involving a party, firm, attorney, technology, or intellectual-property asset during a defined period.
The result set is determined by the active criteria. When interpreting a search or chart, always consider the filters that produced it.
See Terminology for Docket Navigator terms and Analytics Filter Descriptions for filter behavior.
Libraries define the data context
Section titled “Libraries define the data context”Docket Navigator is organized into practice-area libraries. The active library determines the cases, documents, structured data, filters, profiles, analytics, binders, alerts, and other features available for the current work.
Libraries have different data because the underlying proceedings and legal concepts differ. A PTAB-specific view, for example, depends on PTAB data. A trademark-specific view depends on trademark or TTAB data.
For exact coverage dates, forums, and inclusion rules, use Scope of Data.
Searches define a result set
Section titled “Searches define a result set”A search starts with a type of record and a set of criteria. The search result is the set of records that satisfy those criteria.
Filters can operate on entities such as judges or parties, on procedural concepts such as document type and posture, on coded legal concepts such as Legal Issue, on dates and case characteristics, or on document text.
Search results remain useful beyond the first list of records. They can be saved in a binder, combined with other tabs, used as the basis for analytics, and in some workflows used as input to additional research.
See Text Search Instructions for natural-language and Boolean document-text searching.
Binders preserve research context
Section titled “Binders preserve research context”A binder is the workspace that holds related Docket Navigator research.
Search results, analytics, and profiles open in binders. A binder can contain multiple tabs and folders, allowing a research question to develop without discarding the earlier result sets that led to it.
Saved binders make research persistent. They can be reopened, shared, and extended with additional tabs. Docket Navigator therefore treats a research result as part of a working research artifact rather than only as a temporary page.
Profiles are pre-built research binders
Section titled “Profiles are pre-built research binders”A profile organizes Docket Navigator data around one subject, such as a case, judge, court, firm, attorney, party, patent, trademark, copyright, or PTAB expert.
Profiles are pre-built binders. They typically combine:
- an overview with summary statistics and related entities;
- analytics already filtered to the profile subject;
- search-result tabs containing the underlying cases, docket entries, pleadings and orders, determinations, remedies, or other records relevant to that subject.
A profile saves the user from rebuilding the same common searches for a known subject. Its tabs remain filter-driven, so the active filters should still be checked before interpreting a chart or count.
Analytics summarize filtered data
Section titled “Analytics summarize filtered data”An analytics tab takes a filtered set of Docket Navigator data and summarizes it as a chart and data table.
Analytics can be opened from the Analytics Toolkit or as pre-configured tabs inside a profile. The entry point changes the initial filters, but the basic model is the same:
filters → selected records → calculation → chart/table → underlying records
Many chart elements and table values link to the cases, orders, documents, or other records behind the number. Use those links when you need to validate the result or understand why a record was counted.
Alerts turn research into monitoring
Section titled “Alerts turn research into monitoring”Docket Navigator alerts use saved criteria to monitor new activity. Depending on the workflow, alerts can follow cases, docket entries, rulings, parties, patents, or other criteria.
Because alerts are built from Docket Navigator research criteria, the same distinctions that matter in a search also matter in an alert. A broad document-type alert and a narrow Legal Issue alert monitor different sets of future activity.
Publications provide recurring current awareness
Section titled “Publications provide recurring current awareness”Docket Navigator publications, including the Docket Report and library-specific reports, package recent litigation activity into recurring updates.
Publications are a different interaction pattern from a user-built search or alert. They are curated recurring reports rather than an individual user’s saved filter set.
See Publications for the reports available by library.
Working with Docket Navigator through AI
Section titled “Working with Docket Navigator through AI”The Docket Navigator MCP allows compatible AI provider platforms to use Docket Navigator research tools and structured litigation data.
This makes it possible to begin with an ordinary-language research question, such as a factual and legal pattern, and have the AI assistant map that request to Docket Navigator concepts and searches. The assistant can then refine the research conversationally and, where supported, work with Docket Navigator binders.
The Docket Navigator data model remains the foundation of the result. An AI-generated explanation should be evaluated against the Docket Navigator criteria, annotations, links, and underlying source documents used to support it.
See Fact-Pattern Decision Research for an MCP workflow example.
How to verify a Docket Navigator result
Section titled “How to verify a Docket Navigator result”For an important search, profile statistic, analytics result, or AI-assisted answer:
- Identify the library and confirm that it covers the relevant proceeding.
- Inspect the active filters and understand what each filter means.
- Check whether the result is a record list, an analytics summary, or a comparison.
- Review any relevant calculation settings, including totals versus percentages, current-year projections, or stipulated-data settings.
- Follow the result to the underlying cases, orders, documents, or other records.
- Use Terminology and Scope of Data when a Docket Navigator definition or coverage rule affects interpretation.
This interaction pattern is consistent across the platform: start with structured data, define the relevant set, inspect the result, and return to the underlying record when the answer matters.