If you need to look up a Massachusetts state court case, start at masscourts.org, the Trial Court’s free public search portal, officially called the eCourts public portal or “eAccess.” It covers the Boston Municipal Court, District Court, Superior Court, Housing Court, Land Court, and Probate and Family Court, and it works without an account or a fee. Appellate cases live on a separate site, ma-appellatecourts.org, and federal cases filed in Massachusetts are on PACER, not on either state system.
That is the short answer. The longer answer involves a few quirks that trip up first-time users, especially anyone hoping to search criminal cases by name from home. This guide walks through the whole process: what each search field means, what you can and cannot see online, and how to get actual documents once you find the docket.
Step-by-Step: Searching a Case on masscourts.org
Step 1: Open the portal and pass the CAPTCHA
Go to masscourts.org. The site presents a checkbox to confirm you are not a robot, then a link to search public records. Click through. No registration is required for the public side of the system. Attorneys have a separate login, more on that below.
Step 2: Pick the court department and division
This is the step that confuses most people. MassCourts does not search the entire state at once. You must first tell it which court department to look in, and then which division (the specific courthouse). The fields work like this:
- Court Department is the type of court: District Court, Boston Municipal Court, Superior Court, Housing Court, Probate and Family Court, or Land Court. Superior Court handles larger civil cases and serious felonies. District Court and the BMC handle most everything else, including small claims, evictions (called “summary process”), and misdemeanors. Probate and Family Court covers divorce, custody, estates, and guardianships.
- Court Division is the specific courthouse, usually organized by county or city. A car crash lawsuit from Everett would typically be in Malden District Court or, if the damages are large, Middlesex Superior Court.
If you do not know where the case was filed, you may need to try more than one division. A rough rule: civil cases are usually filed where a party lives or where the event happened, and criminal cases are prosecuted where the alleged offense occurred.
Step 3: Choose a search method
Once a court is selected, tabs appear for the different ways to search. Each behaves a little differently.
- Name search. Enter the last name and first name of a party. The system is picky about capitalization: use an initial capital followed by lowercase letters (“Smith,” not “SMITH”). Name search works for civil, small claims, housing, and probate matters. It does not work for most criminal cases on the public portal.
- Case number search. The most reliable method if you have the docket number. Case numbers are both case-sensitive and space-sensitive, so “2377CV00055” and “2377 CV 00055” can return different results. If a valid number comes back empty, try adding or removing a space.
- Case type search. Lets you browse recent filings of a particular type (for example, all summary process cases in a division) within a limited date window. Useful for journalists and researchers watching new filings.
- Ticket or citation search. For traffic matters, you can search by the citation number printed on the ticket.
Step 4: Read the docket
A successful search returns the case docket: the running list of every filing, order, and event in the case, in chronological order, along with party names, attorneys of record, and scheduled hearing dates. For most purposes, the docket tells you what you need: whether a case exists, its status, who represents whom, and when the next court date is.
What the docket usually does not give the public is the documents themselves. Reading a complaint, a motion, or a judge’s written decision generally means going to the clerk’s office, with limited exceptions.
What You Can and Cannot Find Online
The public portal is broad but not complete. Knowing its gaps saves wasted searches.
Criminal cases: docket number only
This is the single biggest limitation. From home, the public cannot search Massachusetts criminal cases by a person’s name. If you already have the docket number, you can pull up the criminal docket. Without it, the online portal will not help you find out whether someone has been charged. This is a deliberate policy choice under the Trial Court’s public access rules, not a technical glitch.
There are two lawful workarounds. First, the public access computers inside each courthouse allow broader searching, including criminal name searches, for that court’s records. Second, for a formal criminal history rather than individual dockets, Massachusetts runs a separate system called iCORI through the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services, which controls who may see what level of criminal offender record information.
Cases you will not see at all
Impounded and sealed cases do not appear in public search results. Under Trial Court Rule XIV, the Uniform Rules on Public Access to Court Records, impounded material is available only to the court, the parties, and their attorneys. Juvenile matters are confidential and are likewise absent from the public portal. Certain sensitive case categories in Probate and Family Court are restricted as well. If a case genuinely exists but returns nothing, impoundment is one possible explanation; another is simply that you are searching the wrong division.
Older cases
Electronic dockets generally reach back to the early 2000s for most Trial Court departments, when courts converted to the current case management system. Anything older usually lives on paper or microfilm at the courthouse, and finding it means contacting the clerk, or for long-closed cases, possibly the Massachusetts Judicial Archives.
Attorney access is different
Massachusetts attorneys get a separate eAccess Attorney Portal tied to their Board of Bar Overseers registration email. It permits statewide searching across courts, a personal hearing calendar, and enhanced access to electronic documents in cases where the attorney has entered an appearance. Paralegals should note the account belongs to the attorney; firms typically work from the attorney’s credentials under the attorney’s supervision.
Looking Up Appellate Cases
Appeals do not appear on masscourts.org. The Supreme Judicial Court and the Appeals Court share their own public search site at ma-appellatecourts.org. Coverage runs deep: SJC dockets are online for cases entered since January 1, 1992, and Appeals Court dockets for cases entered since January 1, 1988. Even better for researchers, briefs filed since September 2007 are usually attached to the docket as PDFs, which is more document access than the trial court portal offers the public.
You can search the appellate site by party name, docket number, attorney, or lower court case. The site also links to oral argument schedules; SJC and Appeals Court arguments are recorded and viewable online through the Suffolk Law School archive linked from the courts’ pages.
One more distinction. If the case was filed in federal court, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, or the First Circuit on appeal, none of the state systems will show it. Federal dockets and documents are on PACER (pacer.uscourts.gov), which requires an account and charges per page, with quarterly fee waivers for light users. Many federal opinions are also free on CourtListener and other public archives.
The In-Person Option: Courthouse Public Access Terminals
Every Massachusetts courthouse maintains public access computers, usually near the clerk’s office. They matter for two reasons. First, they allow searches the remote portal does not, including criminal name searches for cases in that court. Second, clerk’s office staff are nearby if the system fights you on formatting or a case seems to be missing.
Bring whatever identifying information you have: full names with spellings, an approximate filing year, the case number if you have any paperwork. Clerk’s offices are generally open weekday business hours, commonly 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., though hours vary by courthouse, so call ahead.
Getting Copies of Court Documents
Finding the docket is half the job. Getting the papers behind it works like this:
- Identify the filing on the docket. Note the docket entry number and date. Requests go faster when you can say “paper number 12, the motion for summary judgment,” rather than “everything about the case.”
- Contact the clerk’s office for the court where the case is pending (in Probate and Family Court, the Register’s office; at the Land Court, the Recorder’s office). You can appear in person, and many offices accept mailed requests with a self-addressed stamped envelope and payment.
- Pay the copy fee. The Trial Court charges per-page copy fees, and certified or “attested” copies, which carry the clerk’s seal and are needed for many official uses, cost more per page. Fees change, so confirm the current amount with the clerk before mailing a check. If you cannot afford fees in your own case, ask about filing an Affidavit of Indigency.
- Allow time for mailed requests. In-person requests are often filled the same day for active files; mailed requests can take a couple of weeks, and retrieval of archived files takes longer.
Parties and counsel in a case have additional options, including document images through the attorney portal and, in e-filed cases, copies through eFileMA. For everyone else, the clerk’s counter remains the main route to actual documents at the trial court level.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Massachusetts criminal records searchable online by name?
Not through the public masscourts.org portal. Criminal dockets are retrievable online only by docket number or, for traffic matters, citation number. Name searches for criminal cases require the public access terminals at the courthouse, or a formal criminal record request through the state’s iCORI system, which limits what different requesters may see.
Is masscourts.org free to use?
Yes. Searching dockets on the public portal costs nothing and requires no account. Fees only enter the picture when you order copies of documents from the clerk’s office, or when you use the federal PACER system, which is a separate service with its own per-page charges.
Why can’t I find a case I know exists?
The usual culprits, in order: wrong court department or division selected; a name typed in all caps or misspelled; a case number entered with the wrong spacing (the field is space-sensitive and case-sensitive); a case old enough to predate electronic dockets; or a case that is impounded, sealed, or juvenile and therefore hidden from public view.
Can I read the actual court filings online?
Usually not at the trial court level if you are a member of the public; you see the docket, not the documents, and copies come from the clerk. The notable exception is appellate practice: briefs filed with the SJC and Appeals Court since September 2007 are generally posted as PDFs on ma-appellatecourts.org.
How do I look up an eviction or small claims case?
Both are on masscourts.org. Evictions are filed as “summary process” cases, mostly in Housing Court and District Court, and support name searching. Small claims cases appear under the District Court, Boston Municipal Court, or Housing Court division where they were filed.
What about federal cases in Massachusetts?
Cases in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the First Circuit Court of Appeals are not on any state system. Use PACER at pacer.uscourts.gov, which requires registration and charges small per-page fees, with charges waived below a quarterly threshold.
A final note on where to get help. Clerk’s office staff can show you how to search, explain what a docket entry says, and process copy requests, but they are prohibited from giving legal advice, and nothing in this guide is legal advice either; for questions about your own rights in a case, talk to a lawyer.