Ask what is counted, what is named, and what was not searched.
Before signing a court-record check vendor, ask what is being counted, which courts and tribunals are named, what happens when a match is inconclusive, whether every finding links to its source case, the price per check, and what the vendor did not search. A database size without those answers is not a comparison.
A court-record check RFP is a written set of questions that makes every vendor state what it searches, how it decides a record belongs to your subject, what each check costs, and how your data is handled. This background verification vendor checklist gives you 25 of them in five groups, with our own published answers beside each one.
No card needed for the signup credit. Every LegalCheck answer below links to a page we read on 25 September 2026.
Last updated: 25 September 2026
Key takeaways
- A record count is not a comparison. Ask what unit is counted, which forums are named, and whether FIRs are folded into the total.
- Matching is where vendors differ. Ask how a common name is narrowed, what an inconclusive result looks like, and whether filed-by and filed-against are kept apart.
- Every finding a person might act on needs a CNR and a public link. Otherwise nobody can check it, including the candidate.
- Ask for a published price, and what re-reads and failures cost. LegalCheck publishes ₹99 pay as you go and ₹33 on a subscription, with free re-reads, as of 25 September 2026.
- Certifications attach to a management system and a legal entity. Ask for certificate numbers, certifying body, scope and validity.
- Where we have not published an answer, we say so. Retention, data location, sub-processors, webhooks and monitoring are marked “Not published yet: ask us”.
If you buy court-record checks for a BGV firm, a lender, an HR platform or a KYB team, you have probably seen several decks that each claim the biggest court database in India. They are hard to compare because they do not answer the same question.
This page is written for the RFP, in the order most buyers work: coverage, matching, evidence, commercials, security. Each question has one line on why it matters and what LegalCheck publishes today, with a link to check it. The LegalCheck launch post explains the engine, the LegalCheck API guide is the field and price reference, and our court record check guide covers the basics. For why lenders and BGV firms buy this data at all, see court data as a fintech and BGV dataset.
Why is database size alone not a comparison?
Because vendors count different things. One total may be court cases, another may add FIRs, and a third may say “legal records” without defining a record. Numbers in different units cannot be ranked.
Even inside one index the unit matters. As of 25 September 2026, an unfiltered count of the eCourtsIndia index read 33,00,54,228 case records, which we round down to 32 crore+. On 14 September 2026, 13,82,08,718 of the matters then indexed carried an order on file. Both are true, and they measure different things.
Size also says nothing about attribution. An exact-phrase litigant search for Rahul Sharma returned 31,276 court records as of 25 September 2026. A bigger index returns more rows like that, not fewer. Quality depends on how a vendor narrows that pile to one person, and whether it shows its working.
What seven Indian vendors publish about themselves is recorded in the dated benchmark in our API guide (read 15 and 23 September 2026). We do not repeat it, and we have not filled in anyone else’s answers. Send them the questions.
Coverage (Q1 to Q5): what exactly does the vendor search?
Pin down the unit, the named forums, the FIR boundary and how current the data is. Every later answer depends on these.
Q1. Are you counting cases, orders, FIRs or “legal records”, and can you split the total?
Why it matters: A total that mixes cases with FIRs or documents cannot be compared with a total of cases alone.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Court and tribunal case records, 32 crore+. FIRs are not part of the check. The launch post publishes the split between indexed matters and matters with an order on file, dated 14 September 2026. Canonical claims table.
Q2. Which courts and tribunals do you search, by name?
Why it matters: “Major tribunals” is not a list, and for company and borrower checks the deciding matter often sits in an insolvency or recovery forum.
What LegalCheck publishes today: The Supreme Court, all 25 High Courts, district and taluka courts in all 36 states and union territories, and 18 tribunal families, including NCLT, NCLAT, DRT, DRAT, ITAT, CESTAT, NGT, AFT, SAT, TDSAT, APTEL, CAT, CCI, GSTAT, RCT and the consumer commissions. Named list in the API guide; try one forum with the NCLT and NCLAT guide.
Q3. Are FIRs or police records included? If so, for which states and years?
Why it matters: FIR availability varies by state and year, so “includes FIRs” without a table is not an answer.
What LegalCheck publishes today: FIRs are not in LegalCheck, and the report says so. Published FIR PDFs are a separate product, Crime Reports: 14 lakh+ PDFs from 13 states and union territories at ₹1 per PDF. See court check vs police verification vs FIR search.
Q4. How fresh is the data, and what does “updated” mean per court tier?
Why it matters: A snapshot refreshed every few weeks can show a hearing date that has already passed.
What LegalCheck publishes today: The index refreshes 20 lakh+ court records daily (launch post), and any case can be re-fetched from the official source through the case refresh API. A refresh cycle per court tier is not published yet: ask us.
Q5. What does the report do when a case status looks stale?
Why it matters: A raw “pending” can be years old, and a reviewer may treat it as current.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Each match carries status_normalized and status_stale, which flags a register that has not moved in a while; refresh the CNR before relying on it. API guide, and the case status dictionary for what each status means.
Matching (Q6 to Q11): how does the vendor decide a record belongs to your subject?
By evidence beyond the name, or it should. Vendor pages say least about this, so these six questions make the method visible.
Q6. Which inputs do you require, and which do you verify rather than echo back?
Why it matters: If a vendor accepts a PAN or CIN, you need to know whether it checked it or just printed it back.
What LegalCheck publishes today: For a person, only the name is required; relative’s name, addresses, date of birth, aliases and gender are optional corroborators. For a company, CIN, GST and PAN are partner-supplied context, not an independent registry check. Inputs are played back in subject_echo. API docs.
Q7. How do you handle a common name?
Why it matters: An exact-phrase search for Rahul Sharma returned 31,276 court records as of 25 September 2026. A vendor that cannot narrow that hands you strangers’ cases or misses your subject’s.
What LegalCheck publishes today: LegalCheck measures how many people share a name, corroborates relative and district against the electoral roll, and applies named gates that can only lower a match. In the published example, 63 name matches became 9 records covering 8 disputes. Worked example; more in same name, wrong person.
Q8. What exactly happens when a match is inconclusive?
Why it matters: An inconclusive result with a score of zero looks clean on any dashboard.
What LegalCheck publishes today: band_5 returns UNRESOLVED: records exist under the name and none could be attributed. It ships with risk.score 0, and that zero is not clean. Route it to a person. How UNRESOLVED works.
Q9. Do you separate cases filed by the subject from cases filed against them?
Why it matters: Filing forty recovery suits and facing forty are different risks, yet a count-only report shows both as “40 cases”.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Yes. summary.by_role splits matters into against_subject, brought_by_subject, procedural and unknown. The published score basis counts confirmed matters against the subject only. by_role.
Q10. Is the scoring method stated in the payload, and how was the engine evaluated?
Why it matters: A score without a stated method cannot be defended to a credit committee, an auditor or the person it describes.
What LegalCheck publishes today: A scoring object states method, band window and basis, and each match carries a match_breakdown by field. Our own evaluation (14 September 2026): 9.8 out of 10 on twenty real subjects, zero false confirmations, one missed court matter disclosed, scored by a system kept separate from the engine. It is not a third-party certification, and weights and thresholds are not published. Evaluation.
Q11. Is the matching model frozen and versioned, so an old report can be reproduced?
Why it matters: If logic changes silently, a later re-run is not a reproduction.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Every report carries engine.model.id, release date, named gates and a checksum. A released model is immutable; a change creates a new id. A free models endpoint lists accepted ids (the API docs showed eCI-1.0 as default on 25 September 2026). Reproducibility.
Evidence (Q12 to Q15): can your reviewer check every finding?
Only if each finding points to a court record anyone can open. Otherwise it is an assertion.
Q12. Does every finding a person might act on carry a CNR and a public link?
Why it matters: The CNR is the 16-character case identifier. Without it, nobody can open, reproduce or dispute the finding.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Yes. Every confirmed, probable and possible row carries a CNR that resolves to a public case page, plus urls and research_urls that need no API key. See what a CNR encodes and the API guide.
Q13. When a case I know about is missing, can you show what was searched?
Why it matters: Without a log, “why did you miss it?” becomes a guess about spelling and court scope.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Yes. GET /api/partner/legal-check/{code}/log returns every search the engine ran, free, once the job completes. If a case is not indexed at all, Add a Missing Case fetches it by CNR. Search log.
Q14. Is human review included, optional or not offered, and what does it add?
Why it matters: Review can find what an index cannot, but it adds hours or days. Know which parts of a report a person read.
What LegalCheck publishes today: LegalCheck is automated, and most first reports are ready in one to three minutes. A vendor-side lawyer or paralegal review tier is not published yet: ask us. We do publish that someone on your team should review any finding before adverse action. Where the human sits.
Q15. Can a non-technical reviewer open a sample report before we sign?
Why it matters: HR, compliance and legal reviewers decide on the report, not the JSON.
What LegalCheck publishes today: The launch post shows a redacted sample with confirmed, probable, possible and excluded rows and a coverage statement. Reviewers can also run a check at legalcheck.ecourtsindia.com on the signup credit. Redacted sample.
Commercials and integration (Q16 to Q20): what will each check really cost to run?
The price per check, plus whatever repeats, fails or waits.
Q16. What is the published price per check?
Why it matters: “Price on request” slows every budget, and per-jurisdiction pricing multiplies cost for anyone who has moved cities.
What LegalCheck publishes today: ₹99 per accepted LegalCheck on pay as you go, or ₹33 with an active subscription, before 18% GST, for a national check, as of 25 September 2026. New accounts get ₹200 in credits without a card. API pricing.
Q17. What is free to re-read, and when is a failed check refunded?
Why it matters: If re-reads cost money, teams stop re-opening reports.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Only an accepted submission is charged. Status, report, list and models reads are free, as is the search log. Idempotent replays are not charged again, and a terminal processing failure is refunded once, automatically. Billing terms.
Q18. How do idempotency, batch submission and concurrency work?
Why it matters: Retries without idempotency double-charge, and unwritten limits surface in production.
What LegalCheck publishes today: An Idempotency-Key of 1 to 255 characters makes a retry return the original job without a second charge. Three LegalCheck jobs may be queued or running per partner; general ceilings are 100 requests a minute, 3,000 an hour, 50,000 a day and 10 concurrent. No batch submit endpoint is published for LegalCheck. Limits and errors.
Q19. Do you push webhooks, and do you offer ongoing monitoring?
Why it matters: Polling wastes effort at volume, and a one-time check says nothing about next month’s case.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Not published yet: ask us. Today you poll a free status endpoint; our API guide states the API does not yet push webhooks. The report reserves a monitoring block for when monitoring lands, and we do not publish LegalCheck monitoring today. For known CNRs, the case API supports a scheduled refresh-and-compare watcher.
Q20. When the contract ends, what can we keep?
Why it matters: Reports get challenged long after a vendor is replaced.
What LegalCheck publishes today: CNRs are public identifiers pointing to public case pages, so they outlive any contract. The API guide says to store engine.model.id and its checksum with every report. Exit terms for exporting or deleting report history are not published yet: ask us. What to store.
Security and compliance (Q21 to Q25): what should you check before personal data changes hands?
Documents, not adjectives. Ask for the certificate, the policy or the contract clause.
Q21. Which certifications do you hold, for which legal entity, scope and validity?
Why it matters: A certificate covers a named organisation’s management system for a stated scope and period. A logo tells you none of that.
What LegalCheck publishes today: The legal entity is Billion Insights Ventures Pvt. Ltd., Noida, which runs eCourtsIndia. Its management systems are certified to ISO 9001:2015 (certificate ICI/1144148/26), ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018 (ICI/1144151/26) and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (ICI/1144168/26). Certifying body: International Certification & Inspection UK Ltd. (ICI UK). Initial registration: 3 September 2026, with surveillance audits due by 3 August 2027 and 3 August 2028 and re-certification due 2 September 2029. Registered scope, the same on all three: legal and court data aggregation, case search and legal research, case tracking and notifications, AI-powered legal technology, legal profiles and analytics, court orders and judgments, API and legal-tech infrastructure, legal due diligence and institutional services, and platform and technology development. Each certificate says its validity can be checked at ici-uk.com. Read the PDFs yourself, and ask every other vendor for the same four facts: number, body, scope, dates.
Q22. How long do you keep subject data and reports, and how are they deleted?
Why it matters: Retention sets your exposure in a breach, and what you can tell a person who asks what is held.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Not published yet: ask us. Published today: a finished report stays available to re-read free, and correction or removal requests about court records go through the eCourtsIndia FAQs page.
A note on the DPDP Act. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the DPDP Rules, 2025 bear on consent, retention, deletion and breach notice, for you and for your vendor. The Government release of 14 November 2025 says the Rules came with an 18-month phased compliance timeline. Which duties fall on whom is a question for your counsel; this page does not answer it.
Q23. Who can open a report, and how is access controlled?
Why it matters: If a report link can be forwarded and opened by anyone, access control ends at the first email.
What LegalCheck publishes today: API reports are scoped to the authenticated partner; another partner’s job code returns 404 without confirming it exists. Tokens are bearer credentials to keep on your server. The report’s html_url is not a public share page, and web-app reports open after sign-in. API docs.
Q24. Which sub-processors handle the data, and where is it stored and processed?
Why it matters: Your privacy notice and contracts may need to name where personal data goes.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Not published yet: ask us. Ask every vendor for a named list and locations in writing, not a category such as “cloud providers”.
Q25. Does the report state what was not searched, and carry a limitation statement?
Why it matters: An empty watchlist field read as “clear” invents a screening result.
What LegalCheck publishes today: Yes. The watchlist block (sanctions, PEP, adverse media, wilful defaulter, MCA disqualified director) returns not_searched, never clear. Every report carries a coverage statement, a limitations array and a disclaimer that a match is not proof of wrongdoing. Watchlist and coverage.
How do I paste this checklist into an RFP?
Copy the block below as it stands. It holds all 25 questions in plain text, in five groups, with nothing about us in it.
Court-record check vendor RFP: 25 questions
Coverage
- Is your total a count of cases, orders, FIRs or “legal records”? Split it by unit.
- Which courts and tribunals do you search? Name every tribunal.
- Are FIRs included? If so, list states and first year covered.
- How often is each court tier refreshed, and what does “updated” mean?
- How does the report flag a case status that may be stale?
Matching
- Which inputs are required, and which identifiers do you verify rather than echo back?
- How do you handle a very common name? Show a worked example.
- What does the report return when a match is inconclusive?
- Do you separate cases filed by the subject from cases against them?
- Is the scoring method stated in each report, and how was the engine evaluated?
- Is the matching model frozen and versioned, so old reports can be reproduced?
Evidence
- Does every actionable finding carry a CNR and a public link?
- Can you show a log of every search run for a given check?
- Is human review included, optional or not offered, and what does it add?
- Share a sample report a non-technical reviewer can open.
Commercials and integration
- What is the published price per check? National or per jurisdiction?
- What is free to re-read, and when is a failed check refunded?
- How do idempotency, batch submission and concurrency limits work?
- Do you offer webhooks and ongoing monitoring?
- At contract end, what can we keep, export or have deleted?
Security and compliance
- Which certifications do you hold? Give certificate number, certifying body, legal entity, scope and validity.
- What is your retention period for subject data and reports, and how is deletion done?
- Who can open a report, and how is access controlled?
- Which sub-processors handle the data, and where is it stored and processed?
- Does the report state what was not searched, and carry its own limitation statement?
How does LegalCheck answer, side by side?
Our column is filled from published pages; the other two are yours. We have not guessed anyone else’s answers. For what seven vendors published about themselves, use the benchmark in the API guide.
| Question group | What to ask | LegalCheck | Vendor B | Vendor C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coverage | Unit counted; named courts and tribunals | Case records, 32 crore+. SC, 25 High Courts, district and taluka courts, 18 named tribunal families (API guide) | ||
| Coverage | FIRs; freshness; stale status | No FIRs (see Crime Reports). 20 lakh+ records refreshed daily. status_stale per match | ||
| Matching | Inputs verified or echoed; common names | Name required. Company IDs are context, not verified. Electoral corroboration and gates (API docs) | ||
| Matching | Inconclusive results; filed by or against | UNRESOLVED band, score 0 is not clean. by_role split (API guide) | ||
| Matching | Method in payload; frozen model | Method in risk.scoring. Model id and checksum on every report (launch post) | ||
| Evidence | CNR and public link; search log | CNR on every confirmed, probable and possible row. Free search log | ||
| Evidence | Human review; sample report | Automated, mostly 1 to 3 minutes. Review tier: not published yet, ask us. Sample in the launch post | ||
| Commercials | Price; re-reads; refunds | ₹99 pay as you go, ₹33 subscription, before GST. Reads free. Terminal failure refunded once (pricing) | ||
| Integration | Idempotency; concurrency; webhooks; monitoring; exit | Idempotency-Key; three jobs in flight. Webhooks, monitoring, exit terms: not published yet, ask us | ||
| Security | Certifications; retention; access; sub-processors; not searched | ISO 9001, ISO/IEC 20000-1 and ISO/IEC 27001 certificates published (9001, 20000-1, 27001), ICI UK, valid to 2029 subject to audits. Retention, location, sub-processors: not published yet, ask us. Partner-scoped access. Watchlist not_searched |
Test the answers before you trust them
The ₹200 signup credit covers two LegalChecks on pay as you go. Run one on yourself and one on a subject your team already knows, then check every row against its CNR.
No code? Run the same check at legalcheck.ecourtsindia.com.
What this does not mean
A checklist helps you ask better questions. It does not answer the legal ones, and it does not certify anyone.
- A checklist is not a legal opinion. It does not say what the DPDP Act, employment law or lending rules require. Take advice from counsel.
- Certifications attach to a management system, not a report. An ISO certificate covers a named organisation’s processes for a stated scope and period, not a dataset or a finding. A court-record report is a screen, not a certified clearance.
- A blank answer is not proof of absence. A vendor may offer what it has not published. Ask in writing.
- A match is not guilt. Pending is not conviction. Disposed is a status, not an outcome. An unresolved result, or a score of 0, is not clear.
- A court-record check is not the whole background check. It is not police verification, a police clearance certificate, an FIR search, Aadhaar or PAN verification, or sanctions screening. The background check guide shows where each layer fits.
Sources and method
Every LegalCheck answer above links to a page we read on 25 September 2026. Where no page supports an answer, we wrote “Not published yet: ask us”.
- LegalCheck API guide and vendor benchmark (verified 15 September, updated 23 September 2026), read 25 September 2026: endpoints, report fields, limits, worked example.
- LegalCheck launch post (claims dated 14 September 2026), read 25 September 2026: coverage, daily refresh, evaluation, sample report.
- eCourtsIndia API guide read 25 September 2026: refresh, webhooks statement, monitoring block, partner scoping.
- ecourtsindia.com/api/pricing, read 25 September 2026: price, free reads, refunds, signup credit.
- ecourtsindia.com/api/docs, read 25 September 2026: submit fields, job cap, scoping, default model.
- ecourtsindia.com/about-us, read 25 September 2026: ISO standards listed and company name.
- ICI UK certificates for Billion Insights Ventures Pvt. Ltd.: ISO 9001:2015, ICI/1144148/26; ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018, ICI/1144151/26; ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ICI/1144168/26. Initial registration 3 September 2026.
- PIB release on the DPDP Rules, 2025 (14 November 2025), read 25 September 2026.
- Live counts from the eCourtsIndia case index, read 25 September 2026: 33,00,54,228 case records unfiltered; 31,276 records for an exact-phrase litigant search on Rahul Sharma.
- Method: we have not tested any other vendor’s product. Figures are a dated snapshot of a live system, not a service level commitment.
Frequently asked questions
What should I ask a background verification vendor?
Ask what the vendor counts, which courts and tribunals it names, whether FIRs are included, how a common name is narrowed, what an inconclusive result looks like, whether every finding carries a CNR and public link, the price per check, and how data is kept and deleted. The LegalCheck API guide shows how one vendor answers these in its payload.
Which certifications matter for a BGV vendor?
ISO/IEC 27001 covers an information-security management system, and ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 20000-1 cover quality and IT service management. What matters is the certificate itself: number, certifying body, legal entity, scope and validity. eCourtsIndia publishes all three, issued by ICI UK, as downloadable certificates; ask any vendor for theirs.
How do I compare court-record databases?
Compare units, not totals. Ask whether a figure counts cases, orders, FIRs or undefined “records”, which courts and tribunals are named, and how often each tier is refreshed. Then test attribution with a common name. Our dated vendor benchmark records what seven Indian vendors publish about themselves.
What is a CNR and why should every finding have one?
A CNR is the 16-character Case Number Record that identifies one Indian court case. With it, a reviewer can open the matter, an auditor can reproduce the finding and the candidate can dispute it. Without it, a finding is an assertion. CNR Number Decoded explains what each part of the number means.
Should a vendor include human review?
It depends on the job. A lawyer or paralegal review can add context an index cannot, but it adds hours or days. Many teams run a fast automated check first and send the few matters that need judgement to a person. Either way, a human should review a finding before adverse action, as the LegalCheck launch post says.
What happens to data after the contract ends?
That depends on each vendor’s contract, so ask for retention periods, deletion steps and export rights in writing. For LegalCheck, retention and exit terms are not published yet, so ask us. CNRs are public court identifiers, so the cases themselves stay open on eCourtsIndia search whatever happens to the contract. Review data protection duties with counsel.
How much should a court-record check cost?
Many vendors quote on request, so compare like with like: national or per jurisdiction, charged once or per read, refunded on failure or not. LegalCheck publishes ₹99 per accepted check on pay as you go and ₹33 on a subscription, before GST, with free re-reads, on the API pricing page.
Important: This checklist is general information for procurement teams, not legal advice. LegalCheck is a court-record matching report based on public records and probabilistic identity matching. It is not an identity certificate, FIR search, police clearance certificate or certified clearance. A match is not proof of wrongdoing. Answers marked “Not published yet” reflect our public pages on 25 September 2026. eCourtsIndia is not affiliated with any other vendor, and nothing here describes how another vendor’s product performs. Review data protection and employment obligations with your own counsel.
Send the questions, read the answers against the documents, then run one check and open every CNR.