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Court Docket Register With Live Deadlines
River turns the entries into a register, recomputes every live deadline under the counting rules, and totals the continuances nobody added up.
River reads a docket as a set of clocks rather than a list. Every entry gets a row with its date, its filer, its type, and the retrieval route that will actually put the document in front of you. Then the arithmetic nobody runs: each live deadline recomputed under the counting rule, the next date anything is due, and the motions sitting past their date with nothing filed against them. And then the number no order in the file states, which is the total distance the schedule has travelled since the court first set it.
Everything ranking for this query is an anatomy lesson. Here is the caption, here are the party names, here is a numbered entry with a date and a description, here is a glossary telling you that MSJ means motion for summary judgment. All of it correct, and all of it about parsing one line. Not one of those guides computes anything across the entries, and a docket's story is almost always a total rather than a line. The most consequential entry on a docket often looks like the most boring one.
Built for reporters on a court beat, researchers following a case they did not file, and anyone who has to decide whether Tuesday's filing is worth a call. Use it the day you pick the case up, then again on every new entry. When the filings arrive as thousands of unsearchable pages, document dump triage indexes them, and source tracking records which lawyer told you what, and on what terms each time.
The docket never states how far the trial date has moved
An amended scheduling order states new dates and nothing else. It does not say what the old ones were, and it does not say what the previous three orders did, so the distance a case has travelled from its own schedule exists in no document anybody can pull. Take Halverson v. Tidewater Grain Terminal, an invented docket of 187 entries built to a real shape. Its first scheduling order set trial for 9 February 2026. Four continuances later, trial is 30 November 2026.
That is 294 days, or 42 weeks, and every other date moved with it. On 1 September 2025 trial was 161 days away. Today it is 273 days away, so 182 days of the case's life bought 294 days of continuance and the trial date is 112 days further off than when you started watching. Three of the four continuances were the defendant's, three were filed within four days of the discovery deadline they moved, and the four orders together are 2.1 percent of the docket.
The second thing nobody computes is the deadlines. Thirteen clocks are running on that docket, and four of them do not fall where the arithmetic first lands. Two rolled off a weekend, one off Washington's Birthday, and one gained three days because the motion was served by mail rather than electronically. Ten of the thirteen periods are multiples of seven, so they inherit the trigger's weekday and cannot roll for a weekend at all. One motion is three days past its response date with nothing filed against it.
How it works
Send the docket
Attach the docket sheet and any filings you hold, then say what you are following and why.
Get the register
One row per entry with its retrieval route, and the procedural effect of everything filed recently.
Read the dates
Every clock recomputed, the next date anything happens, and the cumulative slip across the schedule.
Work it in chat
Ask what a filing changes, who keeps asking for more time, or what document to pull next.
What you get
- A docket register: one row per entry with the date, the filer, the type and the retrieval route
- Every live deadline recomputed under the counting rule, with the next date anything is actually due
- The cumulative slip: how far each schedule date has moved since the court first set it
- What each recent filing changes procedurally, which is separate from what it argues
- The retrieval route per document: downloadable, courthouse terminal only, paper file, or sealed
- Motions past their response date with nothing filed, and motions pending long enough to be reported
- A read-first list crossed against retrieval, so a blocked document does not quietly go unread
Common questions
How is this different from a docket alert?
An alert tells you an entry appeared. This tells you what the entry changed. A notice of appearance and an amended scheduling order both arrive as one line, and one of them just moved the trial date nine months. The pass reads the entry, states the procedural effect, and updates every date it touched.
Does it tell me who is winning?
No, and a docket cannot. What it can give you is posture: which motions are pending, which side keeps asking for more time, what the court granted without argument, and what falls due next. Twenty of 23 extension requests in the worked case were granted, which is a fact about the case rather than a prediction.
Why recompute a deadline instead of reading it off the docket?
Because the docket rarely states it. An entry records that a motion was filed, and the response date comes from the rules. Rule 6 excludes the trigger day, counts weekends and holidays straight through, rolls a date landing on either, and adds three days for service by mail but nothing for electronic service.
Some of the documents will not open. What then?
That is worth counting rather than working around. Of 146 documents in the worked case, 121 were readable from a desk, 17 needed somebody at the courthouse, and 8 were sealed outright. The judiciary's own guide for journalists notes that paper records can be read in the clerk's office, which is often the only route to them.
Is there a story in a case that is just sitting there?
Frequently the delay is the story. A motion pending more than six months puts the case on a public semiannual report under 28 U.S.C. 476, named, against the judge it is pending before. In the worked case the class certification motion has sat for 251 days and no docket entry says so.
Does it work on state dockets?
Yes, with the caveat that state practice varies far more than federal. The register, the procedural read and the slip arithmetic all run off entries and dates. The deadline computation depends on the local counting rule, so name the court and it applies that one rather than assuming the federal periods.
What connects this to the rest of the reporting?
Filings are documents and documents are sources. The fact check pack joins every assertion in the draft to the filing behind it, and interview transcript workup does the same for the lawyer you got on tape. If the records are not on the docket at all, the FOIA request pack asks the agency and counts the clock.
Court Docket Register With Live Deadlines
Fill in the form and your workspace opens with the work already underway.