Earlier, a shot in court (9)
I believe the answer is:
aforehand
'court' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I cannot tell whether it can be defined by this definition.
'earlier a shot' is the wordplay.
'earlier' becomes 'afore' (I've seen this before).
'a shot' becomes 'hand' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'afore'+'hand'='AFOREHAND'
'in' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for aforehand that I've seen is " in former times".)