search_cases_by_attorney

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Cases where an attorney is counsel of record — by bar number OR by name. "What's on my docket?" for a lawyer or firm. Returns the case number, caption, filing date, case type and county for every case the register lists that attorney on. Each `case_number` goes straight into `lookup_court_case`. EVERY ROW NOW CARRIES `case_status`, with no `enrich` needed — so do not call `lookup_court_case` merely to find out whether a case is open or closed. The returned text is FINER-GRAINED than the four filter values: alongside "Pending" and "Disposed" you will see "Disposed - Voluntary Dismissal", "Disposed - Dismissal on Order of the Court", "Disposed - Clerk of Superior Court" — i.e. HOW it ended, not just that it did. So never test it with equality against the filter vocabulary (`status == "Disposed"` misses most disposed rows); match on a prefix, and quote the portal's own wording when you report it. FAST — about 3-15 seconds. This uses the portal's own attorney-search mode, not the slow WAF-and-CAPTCHA hearing scrape, so do NOT warn the user about a long wait here. PASS EITHER `bar` OR BOTH `last` AND `first` — a first name alone or a last name alone is rejected. Prefer the bar number when you have it: it resolves to exactly one attorney, whereas a name can match several. WHEN A NAME MATCHES MORE THAN ONE ATTORNEY, `attorney_name` comes back NULL and `matched_attorneys` lists everyone matched — the results are then a MERGED docket spanning all of them. Say so and offer to narrow by bar number; do not present it as one lawyer's caseload. When exactly one attorney matched, `attorney_name` is set, and it is worth echoing so the user can confirm it resolved to who they meant. `case_status="Pending"` is usually what someone means by "my cases" — without it you get their entire history, which for a working attorney is mostly closed matters and will hit the cap below. Old cases legitimately remain Pending, so a 2016 case in a Pending list is not necessarily an error. THE 200-CASE CAP IS REAL AND IT BITES HERE. `truncated: true` means matches are MISSING, not merely unshown — a busy defender or a large firm exceeds 200 routinely. `case_status` and `file_date_start`/`file_date_end` narrow SERVER-SIDE and genuinely recover cases; `county` does NOT — it filters after the cap, so a truncated county-filtered count is a lower bound, not a county total. Say the list is incomplete rather than presenting it as the attorney's full caseload. A DATE RANGE MAY NOT BE ENOUGH ON ITS OWN. Measured: bar 21262 restricted to cases filed in 2024 still returned 200 `truncated: true`, spanning only 20 Nov – 31 Dec. Narrow to a few months and check `truncated` again rather than assuming one year fixed it. Dates: ISO `YYYY-MM-DD` or `MM/DD/YYYY` — both accepted. `file_date_*` is WHEN THE CASE WAS FILED, not when a hearing is. For "what's on my calendar today", use `get_attorney_hearing_calendar` — filtering by file date answers a different question and will usually return nothing. "OF RECORD" IS NOT "CURRENTLY REPRESENTING". This is what the register records, so withdrawn, substituted and long-closed representations still appear. Do not describe the result as someone's active caseload. Public record — the portal offers this same search to anyone, so this is not a private view of a firm's book of business. Read-only. North Carolina (NC) only. Informational, not legal advice.