Guide How to remove your record from vLex and Fastcase

Mail contentremovals@clio.com with every URL you found, the case title, and your name exactly as it's printed in the document. That one address covers vLex and Fastcase, which run on the same platform under Clio now. A docket is different: those go through the Docket Alarm form, which decides in about five business days. Send yours today, then file the Google request once the page changes.

What you get

A Docket Alarm docket gets suppressed: the page comes down, they email you to confirm, and the court's own record stays where it is. A published opinion on vLex usually stays up, and vLex will only tell you it'll respond as quickly as possible, so there's no date to hold it to.

What you have to send

Send every URL, the case title, and your name exactly as it's printed in the document, plus one sentence naming the law you say requires removal. If a court sealed, expunged or vacated the case, attach the certified order. vLex publishes no document checklist and asks for no ID.

What stops it

Expect a refusal on a published opinion where you're a named party, because vLex is under no US legal obligation to take one down. Docket Alarm says no in writing too, to attorneys trying to disassociate from cases they worked on, to matters with strong public interest, and to cases with corporations on both sides. If yours involves a minor, a divorce or social security, say so in the reason field: those get suppressed automatically.

List every URL before you write anything

Search your exact case caption in quotes and open every result. The same document surfaces on vlex.com, us.vlex.com and case-law.vlex.com, and those are separate pages that need naming separately. Copy each address into a list, and mark which ones sit on docketalarm.com, because those take a different route and you'll handle them second.

Don't go hunting for a Fastcase page or a Fastcase address. Fastcase research runs on the vLex platform now, so whatever you found through Fastcase is a vLex URL and belongs in the same list.

There's no vLex form, so don't go looking for one

Search for a vLex removal form and you'll land on a page titled Notice of Intent to Request Redaction. It's a US Court of Federal Claims litigation template sitting in vLex's forms library, and filling it in sends your request nowhere. The Anonymise Documents feature in vLex's AI tool is no use either: it only redacts files you upload yourself. The email is the whole process.

Send the email

Address it to contentremovals@clio.com. In the body, list every URL from your list, the case title, your name exactly as it appears in the document, and a specific statement of the legal provision you say compels removal in your jurisdiction. Attach the certified order if a court has sealed, expunged or vacated your case.

Send it from an address you'll check, and save a copy with the date you sent it. You'll need both to follow up, and you'll need the URL list again for the Google step.

Dockets go through the Docket Alarm form

Go to docketalarm.com/Remove and fill in first name, last name, email, phone, the full case URL, and a reason capped at 300 characters. It asks for no ID and no court order, it doesn't charge, and it decides within about five business days and emails you when it suppresses a page.

One link per submission, so five URLs means five trips through the form. Write your 300 characters once in a text file and paste the same wording each time, and keep a copy of what you sent.

Clear the Google result

Once a page returns a 404 or changes, file a Google Outdated Content request for every URL that moved. You'll need to be signed in to a Google account to use the tool. Without this step, the removal you just won stays invisible to the next person who searches your name.

Budget weeks, not days. Search snippets can stay live for several weeks after a page comes down, so file the request, then check your name again in a month.

If nothing comes back

Wait two weeks, then resend the same email to contentremovals@clio.com, with the same URL list and the same certified order attached. Change nothing except the opening line, which should say it's a second request and name the date of the first.

If you're an EU or UK data subject, you've got a stronger route. Send it to dpo@vlex.com as a GDPR Article 17 erasure request, cite the article by number, and copy the Clio address. vLex's controller sits in Barcelona, so a refusal is appealable to the Spanish data protection authority.

European readers should run the Google de-indexing request at the same time, not after vLex answers. The index is the softer target, and waiting on vLex alone can burn months.

What this doesn't fix, and what it costs you

Nothing you send Clio seals or expunges your case. The court's own record stays exactly as it is, and the only thing that changes that is a motion to seal or redact filed at the court.

Winning here also changes nothing on Justia, CourtListener, CaseMine, Leagle or PacerMonitor. Each one is a separate request to a separate operator, with its own address and its own format, and you file them one at a time.

The email is the short part. The rest is the caption search across every vLex domain, one Docket Alarm submission per URL with a 300-character reason written out each time, a Google request for every page that changes, and then the same procedure again at every other database carrying your case.

When vLex isn't the only site carrying it

Send the vLex email yourself. When the same case also sits on Justia, CourtListener, CaseMine and PacerMonitor, court record removal is $199, one time: every legal aggregator we can reach, plus twelve months of re-submission.

Have us do it.

Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee.

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Written by Drew Chapin, who ran all of this on his own name first.