Open Legal Data (Germany)

Structured filtering of court cases using the database. Unlike search_cases (which uses full-text search), this tool filters cases using exact database fields. Returns case metadata without full content, newest first, with ``total`` and ``has_more``. If an exact count takes too long, ``total`` is a lower bound and ``total_is_lower_bound`` is true. A filter combination too broad to answer in time (e.g. a rare ``decision_type`` without court or date filter) returns an ``error`` with a ``hint`` to narrow it. Args: court_id: Filter by court database ID. court_slug: Filter by court slug (e.g. "bgh"). date_after: Cases from this date onward (YYYY-MM-DD). date_before: Cases up to this date (YYYY-MM-DD). file_number: Exact file number (Aktenzeichen). ecli: Exact ECLI identifier. decision_type: Decision type (e.g. "Urteil", "Beschluss"). limit: Maximum results (default 20, max 50). Values above 50 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``. offset: Skip first N results for pagination (default 0).

Retrieve a court case by ID or slug. By default returns the case metadata and the complete, untruncated ``content`` as plain text (HTML tags removed, entities decoded, whitespace normalized; one line per paragraph, Randnummern as line prefix). To read a long decision piece by piece, request a snippet with ``offset`` and/or ``length``; both count characters of that plain text. In snippet mode ``content`` is omitted and a ``snippet`` object is returned: ``text``, ``offset``, ``length``, ``total_length``, ``has_more`` and ``next_offset``. Pass ``next_offset`` as ``offset`` to continue reading until ``has_more`` is false. Args: case_id: Case database ID. slug: Case URL slug. offset: Start position in plain-text characters (default 0). length: Number of plain-text characters to return. 0 (default) means "until the end". Leave both at 0 for the full content. full_text: Deprecated and ignored (content is never truncated). Passing it adds a ``deprecation_warnings`` entry to the response.

Get forward references FROM a case (what this case cites). Returns all laws and cases that the given case references in its text. Useful for understanding the legal basis of a decision. Args: case_id: The database ID of the case.

Get aggregated case statistics. Returns case counts grouped by time period, optionally filtered by court, state, or jurisdiction. Args: court_id: Filter by court ID. state: Filter by state name or slug. jurisdiction: Filter by jurisdiction. Accepts the English shortcuts ("ordinary", "labor", …) or the stored German values ("Ordentliche Gerichtsbarkeit", …). date_after: Count cases from this date (YYYY-MM-DD, default: 1 year ago). date_before: Count cases up to this date (YYYY-MM-DD, default: today). group_by: Time grouping: "month" (default) or "year". Returns an ``{"error": ...}`` payload (instead of silently zero results) when an unknown court_id, state, jurisdiction, group_by, or malformed date is supplied — the previous behavior swallowed bad inputs as ``total: 0`` and was the dangerous failure mode called out in the MCP audit.

Find all cases that cite a specific law section. Returns cases that reference the given statute section in their text. Useful for understanding how courts interpret a specific provision. To narrow the citing set by keyword, court, or date, use ``search_cases(query=..., cited_law_book=..., cited_law_section=...)`` instead. Args: book_code: Law book code (e.g. "BGB", "StGB"). section: Section identifier (e.g. "823"). law_id: Direct law database ID (alternative to book_code+section). sort: "date" (default, newest first) or "most_cited" — the latter surfaces the landmark decisions interpreting this provision (most-cited first). limit: Maximum results (default 20, max 50). Values above 50 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``.

Get reverse references TO a case (cases that cite this case). Find all cases that reference the given case in their text. Useful for understanding the impact and precedent value of a decision. To narrow the citing set by keyword, court, or date, use ``search_cases(query=..., cited_case_id=case_id)`` instead. Args: case_id: The database ID of the cited case. sort: "date" (default, newest first) or "most_cited" (the most influential citing cases first). limit: Maximum results (default 20, max 50). Values above 50 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``.

Get detailed information about a specific court. Look up a court by ID, slug, or code. Returns full details including address, contact information, and case count. Args: court_id: Court database ID. slug: Court slug (e.g. "ag-charlottenburg"). code: Court ECLI code (e.g. "AGBECH" for the Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, "BGH").

Get the full text of a specific law section. Retrieve law text by book code and section number, or by law ID. For example, get_law_section(book_code="BGB", section="823") returns the text of section 823 of the German Civil Code. By default the complete, untruncated ``content`` is returned as plain text (HTML tags removed, entities decoded, whitespace normalized; one line per paragraph or list item). Set ``offset`` and/or ``length`` to get a ``snippet`` of that plain text instead (see get_case for the snippet fields and pagination via ``next_offset``). Args: book_code: Law book code (e.g. "BGB", "StGB", "GG"). section: Section identifier. Accepts bare numbers ("823", "20", "16a") or prefixed forms ("§ 823", "§823", "Art. 14", "Art 14", "Artikel 1"). The prefix spelling does not have to match the book: "Art. 20", "Artikel 20" and "20" all find Art 20 GG. Only exact sections match, never a longer number that contains the input. The ``section`` field on the response is whatever the DB stores, which differs by book convention: BGB / StGB / ZPO etc. store ``§ N`` (e.g. ``"§ 823"``), article-based books store e.g. ``"Art 1"`` (GG) or ``"Art. 6"`` (DSGVO). law_id: Direct law database ID (alternative to book_code+section). offset: Start position in plain-text characters (default 0). length: Number of plain-text characters to return. 0 (default) means "until the end". Leave both at 0 for the full content.

Get OLDP platform coverage summary. Returns an overview of the data available on the Open Legal Data Platform, including counts of cases, laws, courts, and references. Call this first to understand what data you can search and retrieve.

Return MCP server instructions (if any). Always call first.

Find court cases textually similar to a given case. Seeds an Elasticsearch "more like this" query with the full text of the given case and returns the most similar OTHER cases, ranked by similarity. Useful for comparative research: once you have one on-point decision, surface neighbouring case law without crafting a keyword query. For keyword- or citation-scoped neighbours instead, use search_cases. Args: case_id: The database ID of the seed case. limit: Maximum results (default 10, max 50). Values above 50 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``.

Browse and filter German courts. Returns a list of courts matching the given filters. Use this to discover which courts are available before searching for cases. Args: court_type: Filter by court type code (e.g. "AG", "LG", "OLG", "BGH", "VG", "OVG", "BVerwG", "ArbG", "LAG", "BAG"). state: Filter by state name or slug (e.g. "Berlin", "bayern"). jurisdiction: Filter by jurisdiction. Accepts the English shortcuts "ordinary", "administrative", "labor", "social", "fiscal", "constitutional" or the stored German values ("Arbeitsgerichtsbarkeit", …). The Bundespatentgericht (BPatG) belongs to ``ordinary``; there is no separate patent-jurisdiction category — filter on ``court_type="BPatG"`` if you specifically want patent cases. level_of_appeal: Filter by court level. Accepts the English shortcuts "local", "regional", "high", "federal" or the stored German values ("Amtsgericht", …). search: Search court names and aliases. limit: Maximum results to return (default 50, max 100). Values above 100 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``.

List available German law books (e.g. BGB, StGB, GG). Returns law books with their codes, titles, and section counts. Use this to discover what legislation is available before searching for specific law sections. Args: latest_only: Only show latest revisions (default True). search: Search book codes and titles. Best matches come first (exact code, code prefix, code part, whole word in the title, part of a title word); ``match`` on each result says which. If ``search`` is exactly a book code, titles that only contain it inside a longer word (e.g. "BGBl." for "BGB") are left out. limit: Maximum results (default 50, max 200). Values above 200 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``.

Full-text search for German court cases via Elasticsearch. Returns matching cases (with ``file_number``) and highlighted snippets. Does NOT return full case text - use get_case to retrieve complete content. The citation filters compose with ``query`` so you can answer "cases citing § 823 BGB that mention 'Mietrecht'" in one call — pass ``query="Mietrecht"`` together with ``cited_law_book="bgb"`` and ``cited_law_section="823"``. For "give me ALL citing cases" without keyword refinement, prefer the dedicated ``get_cases_for_law`` / ``get_citing_cases`` tools. ``cited_case_id`` is mutually exclusive with the law citation filter — if both are supplied, the law filter wins. Args: query: Search query text (supports Lucene syntax). court_code: Filter by court code (e.g. "BGH", "BVerfG"). start_date: Filter cases from this date (YYYY-MM-DD). end_date: Filter cases up to this date (YYYY-MM-DD). decision_type: Filter by decision type (e.g. "Urteil", "Beschluss"). cited_law_book: Restrict to cases citing a law from this book slug (e.g. "bgb"). Requires ``cited_law_section``. cited_law_section: Restrict to cases citing this law section slug, as in the ``slug`` of get_law_section (e.g. "823" for § 823 BGB, "art-14" for Art. 14 GG). Requires ``cited_law_book``. cited_case_id: Restrict to cases citing the case with this id. sort: Result order — "relevance" (default), "date" (newest first), or "most_cited" (most-cited first, for finding landmark precedent). The response echoes the applied ``sort``; any other value returns an error. Each result carries ``citing_cases_count`` so you can see how often it is cited. With relevance sort each result also carries ``match_quality`` ("high"/"medium"/"low" relative to the top hit) so you can tell where relevance drops off; it is left out for "date" and "most_cited", where the score is not the ranking signal. limit: Maximum results (default 10, max 50). Values above 50 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``.

Full-text search across law sections via Elasticsearch. Returns matching law sections with highlighted snippets. Does NOT return full text - use get_law_section to retrieve the complete content of a specific section. Args: query: Search query text (supports Lucene syntax). book_code: Optional filter by law book code (e.g. "BGB"). limit: Maximum results (default 10, max 50). Values above 50 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``.

Search BOTH legislation and court cases in one call. Returns the most relevant law sections AND court decisions for the query, **grouped by type**. Use this when a legal question may be answered by statute or by case law and you don't yet know which — e.g. "ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete" surfaces § 558 BGB *and* BGH decisions together. For type-specific control (citation filters, court/date filters), use ``search_cases`` / ``search_laws``. Matching is on the words of the text: a law section is found only if it contains the query terms. Colloquial terms that the statute doesn't use (e.g. "Eigenbedarf"; § 573 BGB says "die Räume als Wohnung für sich ... benötigt") find case law but not that section. Then search with the statute's wording, or read the cases' cited sections via ``get_case_references``. Results are grouped rather than merged into one ranked list on purpose: court decisions are long and out-score short statute texts on relevance, so a naive merged ranking returns only cases and buries the on-point law. Args: query: Search query text (supports Lucene syntax and "phrases"). limit: Max results per type (default 5, max 25). Values above 25 are clamped; the response then includes ``limit_clamped: true`` and the original ``requested_limit``.

Send feedback about OLDP or this MCP server to the OLDP team. Use this to report bugs (wrong results, errors, broken tools), problems with the legal data (missing or wrong decisions, laws or references), or to request features. Only submit feedback the user wants to send or has agreed to; do not include personal data or confidential case details. Requires a signed-in connection (OAuth or API token); anonymous calls return an error with a sign-up link. Args: category: One of ``feature_request``, ``bug_report``, ``data_issue`` or ``other``. message: The feedback itself, in English or German (20-5000 characters). For bugs, describe what you did, what you expected and what happened instead. subject: Optional one-line summary (max 200 characters). context: Optional technical context (max 2000 characters), e.g. the tool name and arguments involved, case IDs, ECLI or law references. Returns: ``{"submitted": true, ...}`` on success, otherwise ``{"error": ...}``.

Check if a legal citation exists in the OLDP database. Validates Aktenzeichen (file numbers), ECLI identifiers, or paragraph references (e.g. "§ 823 BGB"). Use this to verify citations before presenting them to users. Args: citation: The citation to validate (e.g. "VI ZR 123/22", "ECLI:DE:BGH:2023:...", "§ 823 BGB"). citation_type: Type hint: "auto" (default), "file_number", "ecli", or "law_reference".

Show who you are connected as and your remaining request budget. Call this before a long task to check how many requests are left, or to learn how to get a larger budget. Every HTTP request to the MCP server counts against the budget, including this call; once nothing is left, requests (this one too) are rejected with HTTP 429 until the window frees up. Returns: - ``authenticated``: whether the connection is signed in. - ``user``: ``username`` and ``profile_complete``, or null. - ``auth_method``: ``oauth``, ``api_token``, ``legacy_token`` or ``session``; null when anonymous. - ``rate_limit``: ``tier`` (``anonymous``, ``registered``, ``enriched`` or ``custom``), ``bucket`` (``shared`` when all anonymous users of this connector share one budget, ``ip`` or ``user``), ``limit`` per ``window_seconds``, ``used``, ``remaining``, and ``retry_after_seconds`` once nothing is left. Signed-in users share one budget between MCP and the REST API. - ``upgrade``: how to get a larger budget (``action``, ``url``, ``limit``, ``message``), or null. Pass the ``message`` and ``url`` on to the user when the budget is too small for the task.