Legal APIs

Application programming interfaces (APIs) enable data and software functionality to be accessed programmatically. The wide ranging and rapid proliferation of open APIs in recent years has unleashed innovation and transformed the web into an interconnected ecosystem of data and applications. In the law, numerous judicial, regulatory, and transactional APIs have become increasingly available and used for a variety of practice-oriented, academic, and governmental purposes.

Due to the increasing importance of APIs for the development of legal technology, the Legal APIs project seeks to answer the following questions:

  • What is the current state-of-the-art and best practices with respect to API development, protocols, tools, and documentation?
  • What are the different types of legal APIs?
  • How are legal APIs used by lawyers, industry, researchers, government, and educators?
  • How do developments in legal informatics impact legal APIs?
  • How can the functionality, usability, and accessibility of legal APIs be improved?

The Legal APIs project also seeks to develop functional API tools and platforms that benefit the legaltech community.

Project Leader: Houman Shadab


The descriptions of current and past projects of CodeX non-residential fellows are provided to illustrate the kind of work our non-residential fellows are carrying out. These projects are listed here for informational purposes only and are not endorsed by CodeX, Stanford Law School, or Stanford University.