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Research + Analysis

Marketing + Outreach

Free PACER, Free the Law: The Past, Present, and Future of Public Access to Court Electronic Records

Sunday, July 21, 2024

3:15pm – 4:15pm CDT

Room: Grand Ballroom A (East Tower Gold Level)

Coordinator/Speaker(s)

Rebecca Fordon (she/her/hers)

Reference Librarian & Adjunct Professor
The Ohio State University, Moritz Law Library
Columbus, Ohio, United States

Slides (PDF)

Speaker(s)

Jonah B. Gelbach (he/him/his)

Herman F. Selvin Professor of Law
Berkeley Law
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
ML

Mike Lissner

Wordly Closed Captioning: https://attend.wordly.ai/join/JTJH-3598

This program will provide a deep dive into PACER’s past, the tools that enable better access, and the future of PACER. We will hear from an empiricist who uses court records in his research, a nonprofit director whose organization has developed many of the tools that enable this work, and a librarian who assists students and faculty in projects using PACER data. Panelists will address questions surrounding IT safety, sealed documents, and privacy issues and will provide best practices and examples of uses.

Target Audience:

Law librarians working in a variety of settings—law schools, government, and law firms—who are interested in enhancing access to legal information.
Librarians who teach law students and lawyers about legal research and legal technology. Managers and librarians who assess software and data sources for their institutions.

This program is sponsored by the Research Instruction & Patron Services SIS (RIPS-SIS).

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to describe the impact PACER’s history has on today’s technical and political difficulties, and how a free PACER would make the legal ecosystem more equitable.
Participants will be able to identify and evaluate multiple free and low-cost ways to access, store, and analyze PACER data, including via web scrapers, APIs, and search engines.
Participants will be able to design instruction to help students or attorneys engage with and use PACER data.