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About OPAL

OPAL (Oppositional Positions in Alabama) is an open-source web scraping tool designed to democratize access to Alabama court data and legal information.

Project Mission

Our mission is to make Alabama's legal information more accessible to: - Journalists investigating legal trends - Researchers studying the justice system - Citizens monitoring court activities - Legal professionals tracking case law

What OPAL Does

OPAL automates the collection of court case data from various Alabama websites, including: - Alabama Appellate Courts - Local news outlets covering legal affairs - Court docket systems - Legal news publications

Key Features

  • Multiple Parser Support: Specialized parsers for different data sources
  • Flexible Output: Export data in JSON, CSV, or other formats
  • Date Filtering: Extract cases from specific time periods
  • Configurable Extraction: Adapt to website changes easily
  • Error Resilience: Robust error handling and retry mechanisms

Project History

OPAL was created to address the challenge of accessing and analyzing Alabama court data, which is often scattered across multiple websites with varying formats. By providing a unified tool for data extraction, OPAL enables systematic analysis of legal trends and patterns.

Technology Stack

  • Language: Python 3.8+
  • Web Scraping: BeautifulSoup4, Requests
  • Data Processing: Pandas (optional)
  • CLI Framework: Click
  • Testing: Pytest

Community

OPAL is maintained by a community of developers, journalists, and legal researchers committed to transparency in the justice system.

Get Involved

License

OPAL is released under the MIT License, making it free for both commercial and non-commercial use.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to: - Contributors who have improved the codebase - Users who provide feedback and bug reports - Organizations supporting open legal data

Contact

  • Email: opal-project@example.com
  • GitHub: https://github.com/your-org/opal
  • Documentation Issues: https://github.com/your-org/opal/issues

Next Steps