law.cornell.edu APIwww.law.cornell.edu ↗
Access thousands of legal definitions, categories, and related terms from Cornell Law's Wex encyclopedia via 4 structured endpoints.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/6bd7af01-4baf-49a4-ac73-de7eb8734ea7/list_entries?limit=5&letter=z' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
List all Wex legal encyclopedia entries for a specific letter or all letters. Returns term names, slugs, and URLs.
| Param | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| limit | integer | Maximum number of entries to return. 0 returns all entries. |
| letter | string | Letter to browse (a-z, or numbers 1, 3, 4, 7, 9). Use 'all' to get entries for all letters. |
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"total": "integer, number of entries returned",
"letter": "string, the letter queried (uppercased, or 'ALL')",
"entries": "array of objects with keys: term, url, slug, letter"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"total": 5,
"letter": "Z",
"entries": [
{
"url": "https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/zambrano",
"slug": "zambrano",
"term": "Zambrano v. Immigration and Naturalization Service (2002)",
"letter": "Z"
},
{
"url": "https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/zealous_witness",
"slug": "zealous_witness",
"term": "zealous witness",
"letter": "Z"
}
]
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the law.cornell.edu API
The Cornell Law Wex API provides structured access to thousands of legal encyclopedia entries across 4 endpoints, covering definitions, legal categories, related terms, and alphabetical indexes. Use get_entry to retrieve a full definition along with its legal_areas and see_also arrays, list_entries to browse the index by letter, get_category_entries to page through entries in a practice area like constitutional law or contracts, and search_entries to find terms by keyword.
What the API Returns
Each Wex encyclopedia entry exposes a term, slug, definition (full explanatory text), legal_areas (an array of practice area strings such as "criminal law and procedure" or "property"), and a see_also array of related term names. The get_entry endpoint requires a slug parameter — for example habeas_corpus or first_amendment — and returns all of these fields in a single response. Spaces in slugs are normalized to underscores automatically.
Browsing and Filtering
list_entries accepts a letter parameter (a–z, or numeric keys 1, 3, 4, 7, 9 for non-alphabetic entries) and returns an array of objects with term, url, slug, and letter. Passing 'all' retrieves every indexed entry at once; set limit to 0 to return the full set without a cap. get_category_entries takes a category slug such as contracts, constitutional_law, or criminal_law_and_procedure, supports page (0-indexed) and limit pagination, and returns each entry with a short snippet alongside the standard term, slug, and url fields. The response also surfaces total_pages for predictable pagination.
Search
search_entries matches a query string against term names in the alphabetical index. By default it restricts the search to the letter that matches the first character of the query, but you can override this with an explicit letter parameter to broaden coverage. Results include term, slug, and url — no definition text is returned at this stage, so a follow-up call to get_entry is needed for full content.
Coverage Notes
The API covers the Wex legal dictionary as a structured data layer: definitions, practice-area classifications, and cross-references. It does not include Cornell Law School's case law collection (LII), the U.S. Code, or CFR annotations. Entry freshness reflects the Wex encyclopedia content as it exists at query time.
- Build a legal glossary widget that fetches
definitionandsee_alsofields for any term users look up - Classify legal documents by detecting Wex
legal_areastags matched to terms found in the text - Generate a browsable A–Z legal dictionary by iterating
list_entriesacross all letters - Populate a practice-area knowledge base by paginating
get_category_entriesfor categories liketort_laworproperty - Auto-link legal terms in contract review tools by resolving slugs via
search_entriesand linking to their Wex URLs - Build study tools for law students that surface related terms from the
see_alsoarray for any given concept - Audit coverage gaps in a legal AI dataset by comparing
totalcounts fromlist_entriesagainst expected term inventories
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 100 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 250 req/min |
One credit = one API call regardless of which marketplace API you call. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does Cornell Law / LII provide an official developer API for Wex?+
What does `get_category_entries` return, and how do I page through results?+
category display name, category_slug, total_pages, page (0-indexed), count, and an entries array where each item has term, slug, url, and snippet. Increment the page parameter from 0 up to total_pages - 1 to retrieve all entries. Setting limit to 0 returns all entries for that page in a single response.Does `search_entries` search inside definition text, or only term names?+
get_entry and filter on the definition field client-side. You can also fork this API on Parse and revise it to add a full-text search endpoint against definition content.Does the API cover Cornell's case law collection (LII) or the U.S. Code?+
Are there any quirks with numeric or special-character entries in `list_entries`?+
letter parameter accepts a small set of numeric keys (1, 3, 4, 7, 9) in addition to a–z, covering Wex terms that begin with numbers. Not all digits are valid keys — only those that have indexed entries. Passing an unsupported value will return zero results rather than an error, so validate against the known set if iterating programmatically.