LegalCheck: Scored Litigation Checks on Indian Court Records

Q: How long does a LegalCheck job take?

estimated_seconds on submit is advisory, not an SLA. Live beta jobs often complete in a few minutes. Always poll status and honour Retry-After.

Q: Can I check companies as well as people?

Yes. Set subject_type to company and send subject.company_name (optional directors, CIN, GST, PAN, addresses).

Q: Where do I start integrating?

Read the cookbook , then the full partner surface in the eCourtsIndia API guide . Interactive docs: /api/docs .

Last verified: 3 September 2026 · Model: eCI-1.2 · Schema: legal-check.v1 · Status: Beta
Pillar hub for the LegalCheck API. Update this page when the model, schema, coverage claim, or price changes.

LegalCheck is eCourtsIndia’s scored litigation background-check API: submit an individual or a company, poll an async job, and read a partner-safe legal-check.v1 report with risk bands and CNR-level matches across 28 crore+ Indian court records.

Full-stack background verification (BGV) platforms still run identity, address, employment, and education checks. LegalCheck is the court layer those stacks can call: a programmable legal-screening product on the same index that powers eCourtsIndia case search, orders, and refresh.

Submit is charged once. Status, report, list and models reads are free.

Key takeaways

Five partner endpoints under /api/partner/legal-check: submit, status, report, list, and models.
Subjects: individual or company. Current model: eCI-1.2. Report schema: legal-check.v1.
Billing: charged once on submit. Status, report, list, and models reads are free. Terminal failures are refunded.
A match is public court data plus probabilistic identity matching. It is not proof of wrongdoing.
Product UI: legalcheck.ecourtsindia.com. Partner docs: ecourtsindia.com/api/docs.

What LegalCheck is

LegalCheck runs an asynchronous court-record check. You POST a subject, receive HTTP 202 with a job code, poll until completed or failed, then GET the report. The report carries risk bands, match bands (confirmed / probable / possible), coverage, limitations, provenance, and deep links to cases on eCourtsIndia.

It is a productised due-diligence job, not another search filter. If you already know a CNR, use case detail and refresh. If you are screening a hire, vendor, or borrower and do not speak court vocabulary yet, use LegalCheck.

What LegalCheck is not

Not FIR or police verification. Police clearance and FIR products are a different data layer.
Not Aadhaar, PAN, or DigiLocker identity proof. Those stay in your KYC stack. Company fields like CIN or PAN on submit are partner-supplied corroborators, not registry proof from LegalCheck.
Not a 99% “clear” certificate. Common Indian names produce candidate matches. You (or your analyst) still verify identity before adverse action.
Not a second court database. LegalCheck scores on the same eCourtsIndia index used by /api/partner/search.

Coverage: India’s judicial ladder

LegalCheck screens against the eCourtsIndia structured layer: Supreme Court, High Courts, district and taluka courts across 800+ districts, and 18 tribunal families (including NCLT, NCLAT, ITAT, CESTAT, DRT/DRAT, NGT, AFT, SAT, TDSAT, APTEL, CAT/CGAT, CCI, GSTAT, RCT, consumer commissions, and related forums). The live case index is 28 crore+ records and growing.

That matters for BGV and credit workflows that historically stopped at district criminal dumps refreshed every few weeks. Insolvency, recovery, and commercial risk often lives in NCLT, DRT, and High Court civil dockets. Missing tribunals is missing the deal-breaking signal.

How the flow works

Call GET /api/partner/legal-check/models (free) if you want to pin a model id.
POST /api/partner/legal-check with subject_type, subject, and optional config. Send Idempotency-Key on retries.
Save data.code from the 202 response.
Poll GET /api/partner/legal-check/{code}. Honour Retry-After while queued or running.
When status is completed, GET /api/partner/legal-check/{code}/report with verbosity (compact / standard / full), optional min_score, and bands.

Early report calls while the job is still running return 409 NOT_READY. That is expected. Keep polling.

Verified against the live partner REST API on 3 September 2026. There is no webhook and no MCP tool yet.

Pricing and limits

A newly accepted submit is charged once. Status, report, list, and models are free. Idempotent replays of the same key and body return the original job without a second charge. Terminal processing failures are refunded once. Confirm live rupee rates on the pricing page (Pay As You Go and Enterprise). New accounts get ₹200 in free credits to start.

At most three LegalCheck jobs queued or running per partner. A fourth submit returns 429 LEGAL_CHECK_QUEUE_FULL.
Reuse Idempotency-Key only with the exact same JSON body.
General API rate limits still apply to the account (see the full API guide). Back off on 429.

Minimal curl

curl -X POST "https://webapi.ecourtsindia.com/api/partner/legal-check" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer eci_live_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: vendor-1042-attempt-1" \
  -d '{"subject_type":"individual","subject":{"name":"Amit Kumar","father_name":"Ramesh Kumar","addresses":["Patna, Bihar"]},"config":{"model":"eCI-1.2","client_ref_no":"VENDOR-1042"}}'

Then poll GET /api/partner/legal-check/{code} and fetch the report when completed. Full recipes: LegalCheck API cookbook.

LegalCheck replaces or powers the court-record module, not the whole background verification package.

Who should use it

BGV and HR-tech platforms adding a court-record module to an existing package.
Lenders and NBFCs screening borrowers, promoters, or guarantors before sanction.
Procurement and vendor KYB teams clearing counterparties.
Builders who do not want to maintain scrapers, OCR, and identity matching just to ship a CRC product.

Feedback (beta)

Running this on real candidates or vendors? Reply with the job code (not the subject PII) and what you expected versus what you got. That is how we tune eCI-1.x. If a band felt wrong, tell us the CNR and why: see How to read a LegalCheck report.

FAQ

What is the LegalCheck API?

LegalCheck is eCourtsIndia’s async scored litigation check for individuals and companies. You submit once, poll status, and read a legal-check.v1 report with risk bands and CNR-level matches on 28 crore+ Indian court records.

Is LegalCheck a criminal background check or police verification?

No. It screens public court and tribunal records. It is not FIR clearance, not a police verification certificate, and not an identity KYC product.

How much does LegalCheck cost?

Submit is metered once per new job. Status, report, list, and models are free. Failed terminal jobs are refunded. See current pricing.

How long does a LegalCheck job take?

estimated_seconds on submit is advisory, not an SLA. Live beta jobs often complete in a few minutes. Always poll status and honour Retry-After.

Can I check companies as well as people?

Yes. Set subject_type to company and send subject.company_name (optional directors, CIN, GST, PAN, addresses).

Does a LegalCheck match prove the person did something wrong?

No. Matches are candidates from public records plus probabilistic identity matching. Verify identity and the court record before any adverse action.

Where do I start integrating?

Read the cookbook, then the full partner surface in the eCourtsIndia API guide. Interactive docs: /api/docs.

Is LegalCheck on MCP yet?

Not yet. LegalCheck is partner REST only today. Case search, orders, statutes, and electoral tools remain on MCP.

Try LegalCheck · API docs · Pricing · Get an API key (₹200 free credits)

Sources and method

Live partner REST surface under https://webapi.ecourtsindia.com/api/partner/legal-check, re-verified on 3 September 2026: GET /models returned a single model eCI-1.2 supporting individual and company; a completed job returned schema_version: legal-check.v1 on engine 8.0.0.
Coverage language follows the eCourtsIndia evergreen floor: 28 crore+ case records across the Supreme Court, High Courts, district and taluka courts, and the tribunal families listed in the live courtType enum (21 court types on 3 September 2026, of which 18 are tribunal forums).
Product UI: legalcheck.ecourtsindia.com. Interactive docs: ecourtsindia.com/api/docs. Rates: ecourtsindia.com/api/pricing.
Full partner surface: How to use the eCourtsIndia API.

Beta product, living page. Figures above are a dated snapshot of a live API, not a service level commitment. Everything on this page was checked against the running endpoints on 3 September 2026; if the API and this page ever disagree, the docs win and this page is the bug.