What do the match levels on litigation and bankruptcy results mean, and how should I use them?

Courts rarely record an EIN or SSN, so we can mainly match cases by name.

One main object in the API response describes the match today: match_confidence: added in September 2026.

A confidence of high, medium, or low, and includes the three signals behind it:

• name_match - Exact or Similar

• address_match - whether the court’s state matches or neighbors a state the subject is registered in, with allowances for federal and national bankruptcy venues

• date_match - whether the case was filed after the entity’s incorporation date, or the person’s 16th birthday

How to use them:

• Route medium and high confidence matches to manual review.

• A low confidence match usually means the court is in a state the subject has no connection to, or the case predates the entity. We recommend disregarding these dockets, as in most cases they are related to similarly-named businesses.

• Ad hoc searches by name only have no incorporation date or state to check against, so their confidence reflects the name match alone and will not reach high.

• Check the party role. A business can appear in someone else’s bankruptcy as a defendant in an adversary proceeding without being the debtor. Case titles and party lists show this.

Note: the console currently displays only Exact or Similar. Confidence is available in the API response.