AI-powered California legal research.
Type your question in plain English. The system extracts the right filters, searches both keyword + semantic, and can synthesize a cited answer. No login required.
Why this exists
Every California Superior Court publishes tentative rulings — preliminary decisions a judge intends to issue before the actual hearing. They're public records, but they live scattered across dozens of court websites in inconsistent formats, often disappearing within days. There's no single place to search across them, and the existing paid legal-research tools either don't index this data at all or charge enterprise pricing for it.
Why tentative rulings matter
Tentative rulings are unusually important indicators of how a case will be decided: judges nearly always adopt their tentative ruling as the ultimate orderissued in the case. Yet those final orders are often unavailable to the public — they're buried behind paywalls or only served electronically to the litigants themselves.
That asymmetry is what makes the tentative ruling so valuable. For practitioners trying to understand local practice and the tendencies of trial-court judges across multiple jurisdictions, the tentative ruling is often the most accessible — and sometimes the only — window into how a particular judge actually decides motions.
What you can do
Natural-language search
Type "summary judgment denied in employment cases this month" — the system extracts filters, runs hybrid keyword + semantic search, ranks via Reciprocal Rank Fusion.
Cited LLM answers
Ask research questions and get a 2-3 paragraph answer with inline citations to the source rulings.
Ask about any ruling
Every case detail page has a streaming Q&A widget grounded in just that ruling. "Why did the court rule this way?" — get the answer in 3 seconds.
Cited-authority extraction
Every ruling automatically extracts the cases, statutes, and rules it cites — grouped, normalized, jurisdiction-tagged.
Judge dossiers + comparison
Per-judge grant rates, motion-type breakdowns, plaintiff-vs-defendant splits. Compare two judges side-by-side.
New case filings index
Daily index of newly-filed civil cases from San Diego, Sacramento, and more. Track new litigation in your practice area before the first ruling drops.
Motion-type analysis
Aggregated grant/deny breakdowns for every major motion type — summary judgment, demurrer, anti-SLAPP, motions to compel, and more. See which judges grant them most and browse real examples.
Attorney appearance records
Search every attorney who appears in an indexed ruling. Win rates, motion types, counties practiced in, and judges appeared before — automatically extracted from every ruling.
34+ California counties
Tentative rulings from Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Orange, Riverside, and 28+ more counties — with coverage history and live activity status for each court.
Monthly corpus insights
Auto-generated monthly recaps of California Superior Court tentative-ruling activity: volume by county, top motion types, judge spotlights, and outcome breakdowns.
Email digests (coming soon)
Soon: sign up for a daily or weekly email with new rulings matching your saved query.
No login required
Search, dossier, and Deep memo features are accessible without an account. Pages are CDN-cached for fast loads.
Frequently asked questions
What is a California tentative ruling?+
A tentative ruling is a preliminary decision issued by a California Superior Court judge before the scheduled hearing. Judges post them—usually the afternoon before the hearing—to give parties an opportunity to prepare arguments or submit if unopposed. Tentative rulings are adopted as the final order in the vast majority of cases, making them the most accessible public record of how a judge actually decides motions.
Where can I search California tentative rulings for free?+
DecisionDepot (decisiondepot.legal) provides free, full-text and AI-powered search across every California Superior Court tentative ruling we index. We cover 34+ counties. No login required — just type a case name, party, attorney, or legal concept into the search bar.
How do I find a California judge's grant rate or ruling tendencies?+
DecisionDepot's judge directory (decisiondepot.legal/judges) shows grant rates, denial rates, continued-matter rates, prevailing-party splits, and motion-type breakdowns for every judge whose rulings we index. Click any judge's name to open their full dossier.
Which California counties does DecisionDepot cover?+
DecisionDepot indexes 34+ California Superior Courts, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Diego, Orange, Sacramento, Riverside, San Bernardino, Marin, Sonoma, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and many more. See the full coverage list at decisiondepot.legal/counties.
How current is the tentative ruling data?+
DecisionDepot runs an automated scraper that collects newly posted tentative rulings from each court's website every weekday afternoon (when courts post them). New rulings typically appear in our database within hours of being posted by the court.
Can I search for an attorney's win rate in California Superior Court?+
Yes. DecisionDepot's attorney directory (decisiondepot.legal/attorneys) shows win rates, counties appeared in, judges appeared before, and case history for every attorney named in a tentative ruling we have indexed. Data is drawn from the rulings themselves — name normalization is imperfect so verify counts before relying on them.
What happens after a California tentative ruling is issued?+
After a tentative ruling is posted, parties have until 4:00 p.m. on the court day before the hearing to notify the court and opposing counsel that they intend to appear and argue. If no party contests the ruling, it is automatically adopted as the final order and the hearing is taken off calendar. In practice, most tentative rulings become the final order — making them reliable predictors of case outcomes.
How do California tentative rulings help with trial preparation?+
Tentative rulings show exactly how a judge reasons through motions: what arguments they find persuasive, which authorities they cite, and how they weigh competing evidence. Searching DecisionDepot for a judge's past tentative rulings on similar motions gives litigators a preview of the reasoning they will need to address or reinforce in their own briefs and oral argument. The judge directory's motion-type breakdown tells you whether a judge tends to grant or deny the specific type of motion you are filing.
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Built by a California attorney for California attorneys. This service is for informational use only and is not legal advice.