Get your district court opinions on Pacer (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) free, thanks to a new report available through the CM/ECF (case management / electronic case filing) system. If your district court is on CM/ECF version 2.4, then opinions that are uploaded into Pacer can be searched for free.
Why is this exciting? District court opinions have been far more difficult to get electronically via the Web than Circuit and US Supreme Court opinions. If you are familiar with Pacer, you do not go to their main Web site and log in, as you might for the US Party Index. Instead, for example, you would go to the court CM/ECF page (here is the District for Southern Ohio) and login using your PACER information. Use the Report page to get "written opinions" and you can run a free search to bring up written opinions. If you run a different search, you'll still be charged for that search (a Docket search, for example) but you won't be charged for viewing the written opinions.
Pacer accounts are free to set up and then you pay as you go.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
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