Contract Disputes by State — Methodology

DocsGenie Research · How this dataset was built, what it measures, and the limits of what it can claim.

This page documents the sources, calculations, and scope rules behind the DocsGenie state-level analysis of U.S. contract litigation. It is written so that a journalist, researcher, or analyst can evaluate and reproduce the work. The dataset is available as a free download (see Download & citation).

What the dataset measures

The core metric is contract case filings per 1,000 businesses, by state. Raw filing counts on their own mostly track how big a state is; normalizing against the number of businesses is what produces a comparable, map-able figure. We report the rate on two bases and corroborate it against population:

Year-matched rate: 2022 filings ÷ 2022 establishments × 1,000.
Current-volume rate: 2024 filings ÷ 2022 establishments × 1,000 (denominator lag disclosed).
Lag-free corroborator: 2024 filings ÷ 2024 population × 1,000.

Data sources

Source	Role	Vintage
NCSC — National Center for State Courts, Court Statistics Project	Numerator: incoming contract case filings, 2020–2024. Received directly from the CSP by data request.	2020–2024
Census SUSB — Statistics of U.S. Businesses	Denominator: business establishment and firm counts by state.	2022 (latest available)
Census Population Estimates	Secondary denominator: per-capita corroboration.	2024
BLS OEWS — Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics	Legal-labor wage context (lawyers 23-1011, paralegals 23-2011, mediators 23-1022).	May 2024

Coverage and scope

This is not a national dataset. The NCSC extract covers states that report to the Court Statistics Project. In this data:

36 states/territories have 2024 filings (the headline cross-section).
29 states have all five years (2020–2024) — the clean backbone used for every trend claim.
17 states do not report and are excluded, including several large ones: California, New York, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, Tennessee, and Louisiana.

Scope rule: Every aggregate figure is stated as "across reporting states," never as a U.S. total. Trend figures use only the 29 full-coverage states. New York was mapped separately from its own court data (see below); California is pending a data request.

Composition — read this before quoting a number

These are not primarily B2B commercial contract disputes. Under the NCSC definition, "contract" filings are dominated by landlord/tenant and debt-collection cases (roughly 85% combined across state courts), plus mortgage foreclosure, with commercial breach a smaller share. The extract is total, undifferentiated incoming contract cases. Any characterization of these figures should reflect that mix and not imply they are all business-to-business commercial litigation.

The NCSC "Contract" category comprises: seller-plaintiff/debt collection, landlord/tenant, mortgage foreclosure, buyer-plaintiff, employment disputes, fraud, and contract-other. It excludes small claims, tort, and eminent domain.

Calculation rules

Denominator anchoring: SUSB business counts lag ~2 years; the cleanest ratio pairs 2022 filings with 2022 establishments. The 2024-basis rate reuses the 2022 denominator with the lag stated, so any gap between the two rates is pure filing growth.
Year-matching: Population Estimates are current; SUSB is not. Each rate names the exact numerator and denominator years.
Descriptive only: All claims are descriptive (e.g., "filings rose X%"). No causal or prescriptive claims are drawn from the raw counts.
Owned estimates vs. cited facts: BLS publishes wage rates, not hours per case. Any per-dispute dollar figure is a model we own and label as such; only the wage rate is a citable government statistic.

New York and California

New York is mapped from the NY State-Paid Trial Court Caseload dashboard by summing the lines that match the NCSC contract definition (contract, UCC, insurance, mortgage foreclosure, consumer credit, commercial, and housing), giving ~364,000 filings for 2024 — a mid-pack rate. NY granular case types exist for 2024 only, so NY has no 2020–2023 trend and its figure is likely a slight undercount. California does not publish a contract breakout; a data request to the Judicial Council is pending and will be mapped the same way when received.

Download & citation

The dataset is free to download and republish.

docsgenie_contract_disputes_by_state.csv — filings, rates, ranks, and coverage by state.
docsgenie_legal_wages_by_state.csv — legal-occupation wages by state.
DATA_DICTIONARY.md — column-by-column definitions.

Suggested citation
DocsGenie Research, "Contract Disputes by State" (2026). Available at docsgenie.net/research/contract-disputes.

License: Free to republish, including charts and the dataset, with attribution and a link to the source page above.