What Is a Litigation Search Report?
What a litigation search report is, what it covers, who needs one, and how it gets prepared across India’s courts and tribunals.
Explainer · Litigation Due Diligence
Before a bank sanctions a loan, a company signs an M&A deal, or a firm onboards a new vendor, someone has to answer one question: does this person or company carry any pending litigation that could turn into a liability. Answering that reliably means searching case records across the Supreme Court, High Courts, district courts, tribunals, and regulators, not running one search on one website. A litigation search report is the document that captures the answer. This explainer covers what it includes, who needs one, and how it gets prepared in India.
- What it is: a document listing every pending or recent court case linked to a person, company, or property.
- Used for: loan sanctions, M&A and IPO due diligence, vendor onboarding, property checks, and background verification.
- What it covers: Supreme Court, High Courts, district courts, tribunals such as NCLT and DRT, and regulators such as SEBI and RERA.
- Prepared: manually, court by court, or generated by search platforms that pull from many courts at once.
- Not the same as: litigation screening, which is an ongoing workflow check, not a point in time report.
01What is a litigation search report?
A litigation search report is a document that lists every pending, ongoing, or recently disposed court case, tribunal matter, or regulatory proceeding linked to a specific person, company, or property. It answers a single practical question: is this party carrying legal risk that is not obvious from its financials or its paperwork.
The report is built by searching case records across the courts and forums where a case could exist, then organising what is found into a structured summary. A good report does not just say “no litigation found”. It shows exactly which courts and databases were searched, so the reader knows how far the check actually went, and what it could have missed.
A litigation search report does not just say whether a case exists. It shows exactly where the search looked, so the reader knows how far the check actually went.
02What a litigation search report covers
Most litigation search reports follow a similar structure, whether a law firm associate prepares them by hand or a search platform generates them automatically.
| Part of the report | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Summary | A one page overview of how many cases were found, and how they are spread across courts and forums. |
| Court or forum | Which body has the case: a High Court, a District Court, or a tribunal such as the NCLT or DRT, or a forum such as RERA, SEBI, or a consumer forum. |
| Case details | Case number, case type, and the names of the parties, that is the petitioner or plaintiff, and the respondent or defendant. |
| Status | Whether the case is pending or disposed, plus the date and outcome of the last hearing. |
| Risk flag | In more advanced reports, each case is tagged high, medium, or low risk based on the type of case and the law involved. |
| Source | A reference back to the court record itself, so a finding can be verified rather than taken on faith. |
A report prepared on a company usually also checks its directors individually, since litigation against a director can matter as much as litigation against the company itself.
03Who needs a litigation search report, and when
The report shows up wherever someone has to sign off on risk before money or a signature changes hands.
- Banks and NBFCs, before sanctioning a loan, to check if the borrower or a guarantor has litigation that could affect repayment.
- Law firms and M&A teams, during due diligence on a target company, to surface disputes that a data room alone will not show.
- Companies preparing for an IPO, where undisclosed litigation against the company or its promoters is a compliance risk.
- Corporate legal and procurement teams, before onboarding a new vendor, counterparty, or franchisee.
- Real estate buyers and developers, to check if a property or its current or past owner is tied up in a title dispute.
- HR and compliance teams, as part of background verification before a senior hire.
04How a litigation search report is prepared
There are two ways teams get this done today: manually, or with a search platform.
The manual route
An associate or a court clerk searches each relevant court and tribunal website one at a time using the party’s name, then compiles what they find into a document. This works, but it is slow, and it depends on the searcher not missing a court. India has thousands of courts and tribunals across states, and a case can be filed under a slightly different spelling of a name, which makes a name only manual search easy to get wrong.
The automated route
Search platforms that pull data from many courts and tribunals into one place can generate the same report in minutes instead of days. This matters most for banks and law firms that need to run this check often, at scale, as routine due diligence. Perfios, for example, offers a legal search report and a Litigation BI product built for banks, NBFCs, and law firms, drawing on data from thousands of courts and tribunals across India and flagging cases by risk level.
Whichever route a team uses, once a search turns up an active matter that needs to be followed, litigation case management software usually becomes the next step. See our guide to litigation management software alternatives in India for that part of the workflow.
05Litigation search report vs litigation screening
A litigation search report is a point in time document: it tells you what litigation exists today, as a snapshot for a specific decision, such as a loan, a deal, or an onboarding. Litigation screening is a related but different exercise, closer to an ongoing workflow check applied before taking on a matter or a client, meant to catch conflicts and risk early rather than produce a one time report. For the full explanation, see what litigation screening is.
06What makes a litigation search report reliable
Not all reports are equal. Four things decide whether a report is actually safe to rely on.
- Coverage: how many courts, tribunals, and forums were actually searched, and whether that includes district courts and tribunals, not only the Supreme Court and High Courts.
- Currency: how recently the underlying data was updated, since a report built on stale data can miss a case filed last week.
- Name matching: whether the search accounts for spelling variations and similar names, since a narrow, exact match search can miss real cases.
- Traceability: whether every case in the report links back to a verifiable court record, rather than a summary that cannot be checked.
Why district court data is uneven
Many district courts in India are only partially digitised, so even automated search tools vary in how current and complete their district court coverage is. Always check what a report actually searched, court by court, before treating a clean result as final.
07Where Claw fits
Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.
Claw does not sell a standalone litigation search report as a packaged product. What it offers is the underlying search and tracking capability this kind of report is built from: AI based case search across 25 High Courts (1980 to 2026) and the Supreme Court (1950 to 2026), covering 30 crore plus judgements, alongside nationwide case tracking across 8,200 plus courts, including tribunals and district courts. For a law firm or an in house legal team compiling a litigation position on a company, an individual, or a matter, that combination covers the two questions a search report is meant to answer: what judgments already exist, and what is currently pending. Claw’s case management layer also reads court orders automatically and schedules reminders, which is useful once a search has surfaced a matter worth tracking going forward.
Litigation search sits next to another due diligence question many legal teams face on the drafting side. See what contract drafting automation is for a related explainer.
08Sources and further reading
- Perfios legal search report and Litigation BI: perfios.ai
- Claw: clawlaw.in
- Supreme Court of India (official judgments): sci.gov.in
This is a general explainer, not legal advice. Coverage details and product names change over time; confirm current specifics directly with each vendor.
09Frequently asked questions
What is a litigation search report?
A litigation search report is a document listing every pending, ongoing, or recently disposed court case, tribunal matter, or regulatory proceeding linked to a specific person, company, or property. It is used to check for hidden legal risk before a loan, deal, or onboarding decision. A good report also states exactly which courts and databases were searched.
What does a litigation search report include?
It typically includes a summary of cases found, then case by case details: the court or forum, the case number, the parties involved, the current status (pending or disposed), and, in more advanced reports, a risk rating for each case. It should also link back to the underlying court record for verification.
Who orders a litigation search report?
Banks and NBFCs order it before sanctioning a loan, law firms and M&A teams order it during due diligence, companies order it before an IPO, and corporate legal teams order it before onboarding a vendor or counterparty. Real estate buyers and HR teams use a similar check for property and background verification.
How is a litigation search report different from litigation screening?
A litigation search report is a point in time snapshot of existing cases, prepared for a specific decision. Litigation screening is more of an ongoing workflow check, applied before taking on a matter or client, to catch conflicts and risk early. See our explainer on litigation screening for the full distinction.
How long does a litigation search report take to prepare?
A manual search across multiple courts and tribunals can take days, since each court has to be searched separately and results checked for name variations. Automated search platforms that already index many courts and tribunals can produce a report in minutes, though coverage and data currency still need to be checked.
Can Claw generate a litigation search report?
Claw does not sell a packaged litigation search report as a named product, but it provides the underlying data such a report needs: AI based case search across 25 High Courts and the Supreme Court, plus nationwide case tracking across 8,200 plus courts including tribunals and district courts. Law firms and legal teams can use that coverage to compile a litigation position on a company, individual, or matter.