Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an online service of the United States Judiciary that provides case and docket information from Federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts. While the growth of PACER accounts appears to be very robust based on the findings of the "United States Courts Electronic Public Access Program - PACER Service Assessment (Sept. 2010).
PACER management appears to be doing more marketing and outreach recently. It is unclear whether this might be a response to re-occuring criticism that the Judiciary keeps much of their "public" information behind what is termed a "paywall". Or the occassional inquiries from the likes of Senator Lieberman about how the PACER generated funds are being spent. See:
Lieberman: Why Do We Have to Pay for PACER?
DOJ Pays $4M a Year to Read Public Court Documents
Use RECAP To Bypass Court Document PACER Paywall
Perhaps just like any entity that sells a service, PACER may just want to increase the usability of their service and expand its use into new markets ? Another graph from the PACER assessment about user constiuencies can be instructive.
While 75% of the users are lawyers and litigants, there are some other sectors that could be making greater use of the service. Several of the other sectors identified as 5% or less, could probably be grown by a more user -friendly site, expanded marketing, and accessible training for PACER.
The Office of the US Courts appears to me moving on all these fronts :
• Released the Case Locator, formerly the U.S.
Party/Case Index (March 2010)
• Increased the fee waiver to $10 per quarter
(March 2010)
• Redesigned the PACER website, pacer.gov
(May 2010)
And most recently have introduced a web site that provides basic orientation and training for PACER, using a subset of actual court filings for users to work with.
PACER Training Site (District Court CM/ECF Version 4.2) - Document Filing System
"Welcome to the PACER training site. Use this site to learn how to use PACER. The site is free of charge and has been populated with real case data from New York Western District Court from cases filed between 1/1/2007 and 7/1/2007."
The page provides suggested searches to try using the tabbed functions at the top of the page. Exeprimenting with the results from the training subset can orient a new user to the PACER interface.
It is also suggested that potential users download the "PACER Service Center User Manual" to familiarize themselves with the service.
Hello,
http://FreeCourtDockets.com is another service which offers any federal court dockets free of charge and without a pacer account. The model they have is ad supported. Recently the site started offering court documents also at small fee. Dockets are still free.
Posted by: Rachel | November 23, 2011 at 09:41 PM