State Court Websites is a practical launcher for deciding whether to start with state court before hiring counsel. For disputes in state jurisdiction—traffic, landlord, family, or small claims—finding the right portal is often the first bottleneck, not the legal analysis. This directory links official state court destinations from the NCSC list and jumps straight to filing instructions, docket tools, and self-help pages relevant to your case, instead of hunting through agency pages and stale bookmarks.
Use this with a legal-aid lens: can the matter be handled by that court’s filing system, and does it accept self-represented filing in your case type? Confirm whether fee waivers, fee schedules, and evidence upload rules are visible before you prepare documents. Then check geography and document readiness because a matching state page can still be wrong if county rules or court level are different. If procedures are unclear, attorney review is required, or restricted matters appear, the page becomes a referral point for legal aid screening rather than a final filing destination.
