Clarivate Westlaw API
★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentData EnrichmentData TransformationapiKey4 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Search and retrieve cases, statutes, and full legal documents from Westlaw so an agent can ground legal answers in primary sources via four focused endpoints.
Use for: Search Westlaw for case law on employment non-compete clauses, Retrieve the full text of Westlaw document 12345, Find recent statutes on data privacy in California, Get the case opinion cited in a contract dispute
Not supported: Does not handle e-filing, document drafting, or matter management — use for searching and retrieving Westlaw cases, statutes, and legal documents only.
Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for Westlaw API, keeping it validated and agent-ready. The Westlaw API from Clarivate provides programmatic access to legal research and analytics, exposing search and document-retrieval endpoints for cases, statutes, and full legal documents. It uses an Authorization-header API key and is targeted at legal-tech tools, in-house legal teams, and AI assistants that need to ground answers in primary legal sources rather than free-text scraping. The endpoint surface is intentionally small — search, retrieve, and filter by document type.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Westlaw API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Westlaw API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
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Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with Westlaw API.
Search legal documents across Westlaw's corpus with POST /search
Retrieve a specific document by documentId for full-text legal citations
Search case law specifically through GET /cases for litigation research
Search statutes through GET /statutes for regulatory and compliance research
Filter searches by jurisdiction and date range using query parameters
Pull primary-source legal text for AI grounding rather than relying on training data
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Westlaw API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Grounded legal research for AI assistants
An AI legal assistant calls POST /search with the user's natural-language question, gets back a ranked list of Westlaw documents, then calls GET /documents/{documentId} for the top results to extract authoritative passages. The assistant cites Westlaw as the source rather than hallucinating from training data, which is the difference between a usable legal tool and a liability.
Call POST /search with the query 'employment non-compete enforceability California', retrieve the top 3 documentIds, and pull each through GET /documents/{documentId}.
Litigation case-law lookup
A litigator preparing a brief calls GET /cases with the parties' names and a date range to find directly-on-point precedents, then pulls the full opinion through GET /documents/{documentId}. This replaces minutes of manual searching in the Westlaw web UI with a single API workflow that can also be scripted into a brief-preparation tool.
Call GET /cases with a party-name query and a date range covering the last 10 years, then retrieve the top result via GET /documents/{documentId}.
Regulatory monitoring across statutes
A compliance team polls GET /statutes regularly with a topic query (for example 'data privacy California') to surface newly enacted or amended statutes. New documentIds trigger a notification, and the full text is pulled via GET /documents/{documentId} for the compliance reviewer.
Call GET /statutes with topic='data privacy' and jurisdiction='California', diff against yesterday's documentId list, and forward new statutes to the compliance reviewer.
AI agent legal grounding via Jentic
A general-purpose AI agent connects to Westlaw through Jentic. When a user asks a legal question, the agent searches by intent ('search Westlaw case law'), loads the schema for POST /search, and executes the call. The user gets a citation-backed answer instead of a confidently wrong summary, and the API key never leaves the Jentic vault.
Through Jentic, search 'search Westlaw case law', load the schema for POST /search, and execute the call with the user's legal question as the query string.
Key Endpoints
4 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for westlaw api, keeping it validated and agent-ready.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
POST
/search
Search legal documents
GET
/documents/{documentId}
Get a legal document by ID
GET
/cases
Search cases
GET
/statutes
Search statutes
POST
/search
Search legal documents
GET
/documents/{documentId}
Get a legal document by ID
GET
/cases
Search cases
GET
/statutes
Search statutes
Why Jentic?
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
The Westlaw API key is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault (MAXsystem). Jentic injects the Authorization header at execution time — the agent never sees the raw key.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search by intent (e.g. 'search Westlaw case law') and Jentic returns the matching Westlaw operation with its input schema, so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing Clarivate's developer portal.
Time to first call
Direct Westlaw integration: 2-3 days including contract sign-off, key provisioning, and search/document wiring. Through Jentic: under an hour once the key is in the vault — search, load schema, execute.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using Westlaw API through Jentic.
Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for Westlaw API?
Clarivate does not publish a public OpenAPI specification for Westlaw. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call Westlaw API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.
What authentication does the Westlaw API use?
The Westlaw API uses an API key sent in the Authorization request header. Through Jentic, the key is stored encrypted in the MAXsystem vault and injected at execution time — the agent's context never holds the raw key.
Can I retrieve the full text of a case opinion or statute?
Yes. After calling /search, /cases, or /statutes to get a documentId, GET /documents/{documentId} returns the full document text. This is the canonical way to pull the primary source for citation in a brief or AI answer.
Can I search case law and statutes separately?
Yes. GET /cases is the dedicated case-law search endpoint and GET /statutes is the dedicated statute-search endpoint. POST /search performs a cross-document search across the full Westlaw corpus when the document type is not known in advance.
What are the rate limits for the Westlaw API?
The OpenAPI spec does not declare explicit rate limits. Clarivate gates Westlaw API access by contract, with per-account quotas. For production usage, add retry-with-backoff on 429 responses and confirm specific limits with your Clarivate account team.
How do I ground an AI agent's legal answers in Westlaw through Jentic?
Run pip install jentic, then have the agent search 'search Westlaw case law', load the schema for POST /search, execute the call with the user's question, and pull the top documents through GET /documents/{documentId}. Jentic resolves the API key automatically — the agent only sees the search results.
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