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Firefox Plugin Liberates Paywalled Court Records
Timothy B. Lee writes "If you want to access federal court records, you're often forced to use PACER, a cumbersome, paywalled Web site run by the federal judiciary. My colleagues and I at Princeton's Center for IT Policy have released a new Firefox extension called RECAP that allows users to automatically upload the documents they download from PACER into a public archive hosted by the Internet Archive. It also saves users money by automatically notifying them if a document they're searching for is available for free from the public archive. Over time, we hope to build a comprehensive, free repository of federal court records that's available to everyone."
Example:
Perhaps most shocking are items such as the list submitted by D.C. Attorney Ronald L. Drake who decided he wasn't being paid on time by the D.C. schools and thus raised his rates retroactively from $390/hour to $425/hour, submitting as evidence the names, home addresses, ages and social security numbers of 67 children.
I hope every judge in the District of Columbia knows about that. What's even more humorous is that Carl Malamud includes a hyperlink in that letter to FindLaw in case you wish to contact Mr. Drake.
And the response informs Malamud that it's taken care of with the SSNs redacted and the documents removed from public display. I wonder how long public.resource.org and Scribd have to demonstrate their usefulness before federal court documents are uploaded there by default in addition to being available through the court?
On a related note, I read in a Google blog that you can now release your works under Creative Commons on books.google.com and they happen to have Carl Malamud's A World's Fair for the Global Village available for download. And if you wish to release your works under the Creative Commons, Google will host them.
My work here is dung.
I don't understand why there is a paywall in the first place. I thought all government records should be available for free through a FOIA request.
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I had to get a PACER account when I filed bankruptcy, so that I could monitor my case and download the documents related to it. It's ridiculous how it works -- they charge you $0.03 for every page that you download. It's like going to the local library and paying to use the copy machine, except in this case it's completely electronic and costs them no consumables. Why are they allowed to charge so much for access to the public record? It seems like a reasonable amount to ask if you went to the local court house and started printing hard copies but $0.03/page for a PDF document? Really?
Kudos to the people who came up with this idea. Now if we only had a free way to search case law. You can access the current Federal and State statues from the relevant Government websites but you have no easy way to do the same for case law, which is at least as important under our legal system. Most of the services to do this are paid ones (Lexis Nexis), I've yet to come across a decent free one.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Because subverting the will of the judiciary always turns out well.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
The court papers scanned, organized and posted themselves.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If they are scanning all of them as part of procedure, then there should be no extra charge for referencing them later.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
I'm a US citizen and pay thousands of dollars a year in Federal taxes. Why should I pay *more* to access public court documents from the Federal courts? If the issue is the costs of hosting the documents on servers, this project, by its mere existence, shows that there are people who will gladly shoulder the cost of hosting the documents, so others can access them for free. If the issue is the cost of having people redact documents where necessary, and scan them in (in the situations where the documents aren't electronic to begin with), that should just be part of the costs of court clerks, which our tax dollars pay for *anyhow*.
Is making a fairly inexpensive program self supporting really more important than ensure citizen's access to the law? Really?
If so, I propose another initiative: "1-900-THE-COPS" is a new "991 Premium" service offering enhanced access to law enforcement for a modest fee...
Joking aside, there are plenty of areas where running government as lean as possible makes sense; but nickle-and-diming justice seems like a terrible plan.
Speaking as a lawyer who spends an inordinate amount of time going through multiple PACER systems to download filings, this is good news, however it would probably take a few years for this to be useful for most lawyers. And outside the more prominent cases the chances are slim that someone else has used this to get a document you want.
And the interface itself isn't THAT cumbersome, though it could be slightly better (for example, it doesn't allow searching by judge, which is annoying when you're trying to see how the judge you're before ruled before). Also each district has its own independent PACER, which always seemed somewhat inefficient to me.
As a lawyer who has used Pacer for many years, my first reaction was the same. Why am I paying for something with no marginal cost that should be free in the first place? However, look at the alternative: driving down to the courthouse and making physical photocopies at even greater expense.
I then learned that they are using the money to build their IT infrastructure to allow even better access. Of course, they will probably never remove the fees, but $.03 is really quite cheap compared to say, Lexis or Westlaw which charge about $100 per day to access their data without a subscription.
Right now, it is optional for lawyers (some courts even charge you to do it) to file electronic versions of your documents. Eventually, all lawyers will file electronic versions of their documents, and access will be better.
I support public.resource.org which is attempting to make all government laws free online.
The wheels of justice move slowly but surely.
If the system relies on my uploading documents that I downloaded from the court, how does it authenticate the validity of those documents? Suppose I'm a patent troll lawyer. What's to keep me (aside from non-technical disciplinary stuff) from downloading documents that have unfavorable rulings to patet troll companies, then modifying them to make it look like the precident is different, and uploading them to RECAP? It seems like this could be a good way to derail the competition.
0118999881999119725...... 3
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
hese sort of redaction failures are important to know about; however, Malamud's letter to the clerk of court betrays a severe deficiency in his understanding of the courts and how they work. The Clerk of Court cannot redact filings. It just does not work that way. Filers must (and are required to) redact filings. The Clerk of Court must also accept any filing. S/he can't turn it away because of a defect in form or substance. The most the clerk can do is notify chambers (the judge) of the issue. The judge can then order the filing sealed as well as a redacted filing from the originator of the document.
In addition, contrary to everything you are reading in this thread, court opinions are free on PACER. Anything that sets forth the reasoned opinion of the court is not charged. Most PACER fees come from people reading mundane scheduling orders and routine motions made by counsel. Yes -- these should be (and are) available to the public. They are even free if you visit the courthouse -- but the system that runs them did not appear out of thin air. PACER fees *do not* pay staff salaries or local court operational costs. They are used to maintain the infrastructure and development of the Case Management and Electronic Case Files system. That infratructure is complex and the software systems used to run and maintain the systems is under constant development to handle new requirements -- be they legal requirements or operational requirements.
The biggest problem with Malamud's project (and this plugin) is not the archival of public documents. I don't think anyone has a problem with that. The biggest problem is that it is woefully incomplete and someone might be under the mistaken impression that their project is anywhere near what Malamud claims it is. Their "vast repository' of documents contains fewer that 20% of the number of filings in one medium to large court out of 96 district courts (let alone Bankruptcy courts, which have much higher volume). The amount of actual data available from PACER dwarfs their available resources and is growing at a geometric pace compared to their relatively static growth. Take a look at their repository and just imagine how much has changed since this small slice of the whole pie was carved out. There is no way a few public users can keep up with hundreds of attorneys filing thousands of documents each day in all these courts. It cannot be done that way -- and they should make it clear that this is resource is nothing more than a tiny window on the whole.
PACER gets its fee for every page downloaded from it. The material is public domain. You could go down to the courthouse, photograph the pages, and put them up on the Web without paying a penny. This project reduces the load on PACER in proportion to the reduction in PACER revenue. What's wrong with that? And why do you assume that only the rich need Federal court documents?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is wonderful news. Now I can save $2.40 on my various sexual harassment lawsuits.
It's not the amount that matters here, it's the principle. Public records should be public, and by that I mean freely available and easily searchable. And "easily searchable" is actually an intrenational standard in the age of Google.
There is no way a few public users can keep up with hundreds of attorneys filing thousands of documents each day in all these courts.
And that right there, is a very sad fact that should never have been allowed to exist.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
So we should stop allowing people to file documents with the courts? Or should we stop allowing documents to be available for public use? Which "fact" are you referring to?
The thing is, pacer records are intended to be public and supposed to be free. Lieberman has asked about this before. The creation of documents online was supposed to make them free eventually, specifically.
"I would rather eliminate the res judicata that forces attorneys to unload a full larder of motions at trial just to make sure nothing gets locked out at appeal."
That is just plain silly. If you didn't have res judicata, the attorneys would file even more paper in multiple lawsuits instead of just one lawsuit. Furthermore, the other side would never have the relief of knowing that the case is really over.
You don't want causes of action to be ZOMBIES that are never dead! You want finality!!!
Model Rules of Professional Conduct 1.6, section a states that "A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b)." Hence, the attorney's restriction on discussing or distributing information relating to his client is NOT limited to what would otherwise be commonly referred to as "confidential" information. Even if the information in question, including the content of public filings, is already within the public consciousness, the lawyer is still prohibited from furthering the spread of that information. For instance, a lawyer should not take a copy of the complaint he just filed at court and put it up on a billboard (unless otherwise required by the applicable rules).
As an attorney who has used PACER, I have logged onto PACER to download copies of judicial noticies, orders, pleadings from the other parties involved in the case, etc... Those orders, pleadings, notices are arguably information relating to my client and accordingly, I am prohibited from distributing that information.
You mention lawyers studying other cases. While it is true that lawyers "study other cases", it may not be what you think. I suppose the occasional lawyer will look through cases to see how a particularly skilled lawyer drafted his pleadings. Or, for instance, I have personally sat in on hearings in which skilled lawyers were participating. But this is not what is meant by "studying cases".
"Studying cases" almost ubiquitously refers to the study of higher court opinions, such as US Supreme Court opinions or opinions from the highest courts of each state. Those opinions are published into typically free archives available at each respective court's website. Searching those opinions, however, is not as easy and is typically a "pay-for" service, but not through PACER.
Again, my own experience and the experience of my associates tells me that lawyers most often access PACER to access pleadings in their own current cases, not for academic review. Accordingly, the information they view at PACER falls within "client information", the spread of which by the attorney is frowned upon by the ABA.