It was asked in another thread about what RECAP is and how it works. Here then, is a brief explanation.
PACER - Public Access to Court Electronic Records - is the system by which us normal citizens can access various court documents.
Attorneys and the Courts communicate, more and more, on a daily basis using the CM/ECF (Case Management/Electronic Case Filing) system. That system can be used by us, via PACER. But it costs. To see an updated docket, it will cost 16 cents. To view a filing, it will cost 8 cents per page, up to a total of $2.40 per document (30 or more pages).
If you go to the thread I started on the current 2A cases and look at any of the dockets, you will see all the filings made. Each time that docket was updated, cost someone $.16. You will also notice that certain of the docket entries are linked to a PDF for download. Each of those cost someone some money.
If you stop and figure it out, there are literally hundreds of dollars that someone spent, making all that info available, to you, for free. How do we do that?
There is a Firefox extension (add-on) that only becomes active when you are logged into PACER. That extension is called RECAP. It will automatically upload docket reports and any filings you decide to download (or view). The app uploads these to a public archive called, Internet Archive, which is free to use, unlike PACER. Once you log off PACER, RECAP goes back into hibernation. RECAP does not transmit anything, anywhere, except when logged on to PACER. Otherwise, it sits, invisible.
Now all of this obviously has cost some money. There are only a few people, nationwide that are tracking all these 2A court cases.
The one good thing about the PACER system, is that it only bills by the quarter. If your usage is less than $10, you are not billed... Since
only 4 or 5 of us that are doing this, it is costing us quite a few bucks. More help would be nice...
But then we would need to coordinate so that we are not all RECAPping the same things. Not every case needs to be looked at, every week. Once you begin to understand how the courts manage the cases, you only need to look when you know something is to be filed. So coordinating is not the problem it may look to be.
One major drawback of the PACER system (and hence RECAP itself) is when a case gets into the Circuit Courts of Appeal. Their docket system is completely different and the programmers of RECAP have yet to be able to implement this in the app. Hopefully, time will cure this. Anything getting to the Supreme Court, is yet another stumbling block. But only for RECAP, as the SCOTUS itself has all the info you need. What they don't carry, the ABA does.
PACER - Public Access to Court Electronic Records - is the system by which us normal citizens can access various court documents.
Attorneys and the Courts communicate, more and more, on a daily basis using the CM/ECF (Case Management/Electronic Case Filing) system. That system can be used by us, via PACER. But it costs. To see an updated docket, it will cost 16 cents. To view a filing, it will cost 8 cents per page, up to a total of $2.40 per document (30 or more pages).
If you go to the thread I started on the current 2A cases and look at any of the dockets, you will see all the filings made. Each time that docket was updated, cost someone $.16. You will also notice that certain of the docket entries are linked to a PDF for download. Each of those cost someone some money.
If you stop and figure it out, there are literally hundreds of dollars that someone spent, making all that info available, to you, for free. How do we do that?
There is a Firefox extension (add-on) that only becomes active when you are logged into PACER. That extension is called RECAP. It will automatically upload docket reports and any filings you decide to download (or view). The app uploads these to a public archive called, Internet Archive, which is free to use, unlike PACER. Once you log off PACER, RECAP goes back into hibernation. RECAP does not transmit anything, anywhere, except when logged on to PACER. Otherwise, it sits, invisible.
Now all of this obviously has cost some money. There are only a few people, nationwide that are tracking all these 2A court cases.
The one good thing about the PACER system, is that it only bills by the quarter. If your usage is less than $10, you are not billed... Since
only 4 or 5 of us that are doing this, it is costing us quite a few bucks. More help would be nice...
But then we would need to coordinate so that we are not all RECAPping the same things. Not every case needs to be looked at, every week. Once you begin to understand how the courts manage the cases, you only need to look when you know something is to be filed. So coordinating is not the problem it may look to be.
One major drawback of the PACER system (and hence RECAP itself) is when a case gets into the Circuit Courts of Appeal. Their docket system is completely different and the programmers of RECAP have yet to be able to implement this in the app. Hopefully, time will cure this. Anything getting to the Supreme Court, is yet another stumbling block. But only for RECAP, as the SCOTUS itself has all the info you need. What they don't carry, the ABA does.