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Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Figures are drawn from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Most figures here are cited but not individually checked against a pinned source excerpt; the ones that are say so and link the excerpt. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

IndustryNAICS 92211Public Administration

Courts (NAICS 92211): An Investor's Primer

1. Overview

North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 92211, Courts is a five-digit NAICS industry that covers the civilian courts of law making up the judicial branch of American government: federal, state, county, and municipal courts, plus court-only functions such as serving legal process and providing courthouse security. [1]

This industry contains exactly one six-digit national industry, 922110 Courts: and is therefore, in practice, identical to it. Everything of substance about the economics, structure, and investable opportunity lives in the child primer; this page is a short rollup that states what the level is, gives its ground-truth figures, and points you to 922110 for the full treatment.

The one investor takeaway to carry over: you cannot buy a court. Courts are a taxpayer-funded government function that earns no profit and pays no dividend. The investable opportunity is the large, mostly private ecosystem around the courtroom, court and government software, legal-research and artificial-intelligence (AI) platforms, litigation finance, court reporting, private arbitration, and bail bonds, whose fortunes track court caseloads, government technology budgets, and litigation activity. [1]

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested hierarchy. A five-digit industry can hold several six-digit national industries; 92211 holds only one:

Child code Name Share of the level
922110 Courts 100%

Because there is a single child, 92211 = 922110: the rollup adds nothing the child does not already contain. For scope, exclusions, and the full investment case, read the 922110 Courts primer. [1]

Worth restating from the child, because it governs how to size and invest in this level: several adjacent justice functions sit in separate NAICS codes and are not part of 92211, police protection (922120), correctional institutions (922140), parole and probation (922150), legal counsel and prosecution (922130), other justice/public-order activities (922190), military courts (under 928110 National Security), and tribal courts (under 921150). Private law firms that appear before courts fall under NAICS 5411 Legal Services, not here. [1][2]

3. Size (this level's figures, with caveat)

Our ground-truth data. Histometrics' ingested federal statistics contain no stat_metrics entries for NAICS 92211: no revenue, employment, establishment, or market-size figure. We therefore report none for this level, and never state a suppressed value as if it were real.

That absence is expected, not an error. It is a structural undercount: courts are a government activity, and the Census Bureau's business surveys (Economic Census, County Business Patterns, Nonemployer Statistics) are built to count private employers and explicitly exclude government establishments and Public Administration. [5] The private slice actually inside this code, a little contract security and support work, is tiny; ownership here is overwhelmingly governmental. To size courts you must use government-finance, judiciary-budget, and caseload data instead. [2]

Because 92211 equals 922110, the child primer's labeled figures carry over unchanged:

  • State and local court spending: roughly $52 billion in 2021, up about 65% in real terms since 1992. [9]
  • Federal judiciary budget: about $8.6 billion in enacted discretionary appropriations for fiscal year (FY) 2024, with a request near $9.0 billion for FY2025 (including $94.2 million for cybersecurity and information-technology modernization). [10][11][12]
  • Caseload: state courts handle roughly 68–70 million cases filed a year and well over 98% of all U.S. filings; federal courts are far smaller. [6][7][8]
  • Court fees: the federal PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) system alone collects about $140 million a year. [13][14]

This is a multi-tens-of-billions-of-dollars public enterprise that is nearly invisible in standard business statistics. These are court-system activity and spending figures, not revenue available to private vendors.

4. Investable universe (where the value sits)

With a single child, the investable map is identical to 922110's: there is no pure-play "court" stock. Investors reach the theme through the vendors, information providers, and financiers around the courtroom, whose court exposure varies widely. See the 922110 primer for the full table; in brief: [1]

  • Court / government software: Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL), Daily Journal (NASDAQ: DJCO, via Journal Technologies), Constellation Software (TSX: CSU, via its equivant unit), plus private roll-ups such as Catalis, Avenu, and File & ServeXpress.
  • Legal information and legal AI: Thomson Reuters (NYSE/TSX: TRI, Westlaw/CoCounsel) and RELX (NYSE/LSE: RELX, LexisNexis), a near-duopoly.
  • Litigation finance: Burford Capital (NYSE/LSE: BUR), the largest listed funder.
  • Court reporting, arbitration, and bail bonds: mostly private, Veritext (court reporting), JAMS and the American Arbitration Association (dispute resolution), and a fragmented bail-bond field backed by a few surety insurers.

5. How the money works

Same as the child: courts are cost centers, funded by appropriations plus filing fees, fines, and user charges; they are measured by clearance rates and access to justice, not margins. The economics that matter to an investor belong to the surrounding businesses: recurring-revenue court software (sticky multi-year contracts with high switching costs), high-margin legal-information subscriptions, outcome-linked litigation finance, per-transcript court reporting, case-administration fees in arbitration, and premium-minus-forfeiture bail bonding. A useful subtlety carried from 922110: more filings do not automatically create vendor revenue: a court can get busier under a fixed-price contract without paying more, while a system replacement can pay out even when filings are flat. [1][17]

6. Demand drivers

Identical to 922110: persistent case volume (roughly 68–70 million state cases a year); digital modernization (e-filing, online payments, cloud migration, integrated case management, the strongest structural tailwind); post-pandemic complexity and backlog; cybersecurity spending after escalated attacks on the federal case-management system in 2025; AI adoption under cautious court guidance; and government budgets and policy cycles that move whole sub-markets (bail reform, arbitration clauses, mass arbitration). [6][7][14][15] Judgment: the durable demand comes from modernization and security, not raw case-volume growth. [1]

7. Regulation

The industry is a branch of government: the federal judiciary self-administers through the Judicial Conference and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts; state systems answer to their supreme courts; separation of powers protects independence and budgets. The ecosystem is heavily regulated, government procurement and cloud-security regimes such as the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), public-access-versus-confidentiality rules, emerging AI-governance policy, state licensing of court reporters and bail agents, the Federal Arbitration Act underpinning private arbitration, and a live fight over litigation-finance disclosure. Full detail is in the 922110 primer. [1]

8. Consolidation

As in the child: court software is a consolidating oligopoly led by Tyler, with private-equity roll-ups (Catalis, Avenu, File & ServeXpress) as challengers; legal information is a duopoly (Westlaw vs. LexisNexis) now competing on generative AI; litigation finance is institutionalizing behind Burford; court reporting is rolling up (Veritext) amid a stenographer shortage; arbitration is concentrated (JAMS + AAA) and reshaped by mass arbitration; and bail bonds are the opposite, thousands of tiny operators in a market shrinking under reform. Vendor market-share claims are company-reported, not independently verified. [1]

9. Risks

Unchanged from 922110: budget and procurement risk (everything downstream depends on government money and slow appropriations cycles); policy and political risk (bail reform, litigation-finance limits, free-PACER proposals, arbitration-law changes); implementation and concentration risk on mission-critical statewide systems; cybersecurity, privacy, and AI risk over sensitive court data; antitrust scrutiny of the software and legal-information leaders; and exposure misclassification: a company may sell to courts but earn most of its economics from law firms, police, or corrections, and private-equity platforms may carry acquisition debt. [1][10]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Because 92211 is identical to its one child, the playbook is the 922110 playbook. Start with exposure, not the ticker: every listed name is a proxy, a vendor or financier around courts, carrying business well beyond the courtroom. The cleanest large-cap route to court modernization is Tyler Technologies; Thomson Reuters and RELX offer legal information and AI; Burford is the listed way to own litigation-outcome returns; Daily Journal and Constellation Software bury court-software units inside broader businesses. Private routes run through PE-backed court-software, court-reporting, and arbitration platforms, litigation-finance funds (returns largely uncorrelated with public markets, but illiquid and long-dated), municipal bonds for courthouse construction, and venture capital in legal-AI startups. [1]

Outlook, judgment. U.S. courts should remain a durable, low-cyclicality public-service market, with the strongest tailwind being the multi-year digitization and security hardening of the court system. The most attractive investments are well-managed, mission-critical vendors with recurring revenue, high retention, and diversified government exposure. Court exposure alone is not enough; execution, contract quality, security, and valuation determine returns, and all of it hinges on government budgets and policy choices that can shift quickly. For the complete analysis, read the 922110 Courts primer. [1]

Sources

  1. Histometrics, "Courts (NAICS 922110): An Investor's Primer" (child primer; full analysis, tables, and citations). This rollup synthesizes that primer.
  2. U.S. Census Bureau, "Sector 92 — Public Administration — 2022 NAICS," 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=92&input=92&year=2022
  3. U.S. Census Bureau, business-statistics program scope — County Business Patterns, Economic Census, and Nonemployer Statistics exclude government establishments and Public Administration. https://www.census.gov/econ/overview/mu0800.html; https://www.census.gov/econ/overview/mu0000.html; https://www.census.gov/econ/overview/mu0500.html
  4. The Pew Charitable Trusts, "How Many Cases — and What Kind — Do State and Local Courts Handle?" (68.5 million, 2023), 2025. https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/data-visualizations/2025/03/how-many-cases-and-what-kind-do-state-and-local-courts-handle
  5. National Center for State Courts (NCSC), "Annual Report" (~70 million state cases), 2025. https://www.ncsc.org/about-us/annual-report
  6. Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, "Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2025" (12 months ending March 31, 2025). https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/reports/statistical-reports/federal-judicial-caseload-statistics/federal-judicial-caseload-statistics-2025
  7. Urban Institute, "Criminal Justice Expenditures: Police, Corrections, and Courts" (state/local court spending, data through 2021), 2024. https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/criminal-justice-police-corrections-courts-expenditures
  8. Congressional Research Service, "Judiciary Appropriations, FY2024" (R48077), 2024. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48077
  9. Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, "Funding and Budget — Annual Report 2025" (FY2025 discretionary appropriations; $94.2M cybersecurity/IT), 2025. https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/reports/annual-reports/directors-annual-report/annual-report-2025/funding-and-budget-annual-report-2025
  10. Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, "The Judiciary Fiscal Year 2025 Congressional Budget Summary" (~$9.0B request), 2024. https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/fy_2025_congressional_budget_summary.pdf
  11. PACER (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts), "PACER Pricing: How Fees Work." https://pacer.uscourts.gov/pacer-pricing-how-fees-work
  12. Fix the Court, "Free PACER" (~$140M/year; 87% of fees from 2% of users), 2019–2024. https://fixthecourt.com/freepacer/
  13. Daily Journal Corporation, "2025 Annual Report" (Journal Technologies revenue and mix), 2025. https://ir.dailyjournal.com/hubfs/Annual%20Report%202025%20-%2020260120-1.pdf?hsLang=en
  14. Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, "Cybersecurity Measures Strengthened in Light of Attacks on Judiciary's Case Management System," 2025. https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/judiciary-news/2025/08/07/cybersecurity-measures-strengthened-light-attacks-judiciarys-case-management-system
  15. Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, "Court Operations — Annual Report 2025" (AI task force and interim guidance), 2025. https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/reports/annual-reports/directors-annual-report/annual-report-2025/court-operations-annual-report-2025
  16. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), "Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA)," 2014. https://csrc.nist.gov/Topics/Laws-and-Regulations/laws/FISMA
  17. Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), "Authority & Responsibility," 2024. https://www.fedramp.gov/docs/authority/