Authored by Mary Susan Lucas, Reference & Electronic Resources Librarian
What is PACER?
Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information online from federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts.
PACER requires that you set up an account. PACER is not expensive, however, it is not free unless your usage is less than $15 in a quarter. Access to case information costs $0.10 per page. The cost to access a single document is capped at $3.00, the equivalent of 30 pages. The cap does not apply to name searches, reports that are not case-specific, and transcripts of federal court proceedings.
What is RECAP?
RECAP is an extension for Firefox or Chrome that improves the PACER experience while helping PACER users build a free and open repository of public court records. RECAP users automatically donate the documents they purchase from PACER into a public repository hosted by the Internet Archive. RECAP saves PACER users money by alerting them when a document they are searching for is already available from this repository. RECAP also makes other enhancements to the PACER experience, including more user-friendly file names.
RECAP is part of the Free Law Project, a California non-profit public benefit corporation and a federally-recognized 501(c)(3) public charity whose specific purposes include providing free, public, and permanent access to primary legal materials on the internet for educational, charitable, and scientific purposes to the benefit of the general public and the public interest.
Try the Advanced Search on RECAP to start accessing federal court records for free.
For more information, read the ABA Journal Legal Technology News.
The Barrister 