We have to confess something. You’ve been an unwitting victim of our long-con.
For the six months, nearly every day, our editor has posted one word on various social media platforms: Oh. (and a link). This took the reader to a newly filed and previously unreported court record. In clicking on the link, you’ve been one of the first people in the world to read breaking news on topics such as national guard deployments, national security arrests, Jeffrey Epstein-related filings, presidential lawsuits against news organizations, immigration policies, and major court opinions. Likely reflecting a feeling that you’re part of a select group that understands there is a secret news bat signal, the ‘Oh’ posts do not tend to get retweeted a whole lot, but the quiet engagement is off the charts. Our ‘Oh’ tweets routinely garner thousands of link clicks and have spurred dozens of reporters to file national and local stories around the country.
We’re able to identify newsworthy court filings because we’ve spent decades covering the U.S. Courts and creating proprietary reporting alert systems to ensure that the most pertinent records are brought to light. We’ve channeled those tools and expertise to this news site. Over the last four years, has become the definitive source for legal news. Our reporting changed the course of lawsuits and, on more than one occasion, protected the little guy. Federal judges in their decisions, hundreds of media outlets to discover news, and the public trusts us to that would never be told without us. If you’re not a Court Watch subscriber yet, we’d humbly encourage you to subscribe for free.
Our readers also come from all professional backgrounds and political persuasions. We have at least one Assistant U.S. Attorney and Federal Defender subscriber in every court district in America. An attorney from every BigLaw firm reads us. Most of the TV anchors who report the news every evening read their news first here in the morning. If you open today’s front page, the bylines all include reporters who read our journalism religiously. We have hard-core MAGA subscribers who believe the President can do no wrong and folks that cried tears of joy when Zohran Mamdani won in November. We endeavor to report the news in a way that brings them all together to the central tenets of Court Watch’s style of journalism: Non-partisan. Informative. Engaging.
Every Friday morning, Court Watch publishes a free roundup of the most fascinating court records of the week. On Sundays, our pay-walled The Rabbit Hole takes the reader through a single federal court docket, filing, or topic and dives deep into the details.
So if you got here because we’ve involuntarily trained you to know that when we simply say ‘Oh,’ it’s worth a click, we hope you’ll make the jump to a Court Watch subscriber. We trust you’ve enjoyed being a small part of our own version of Pavlovian court news reporting. We’d also encourage you to share this page with your own ‘Oh’ social media post and join us in growing our Court Watch community. And don’t worry, we’ll keep posting ‘Oh’ and bringing you breaking news from the U.S. Courts.
P.S. On this, the first of April, here’s one more breaking news court record you’ll exclusively find here.