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Courts Feel Effects of PACER's Growing Popularity

September 13, 2007 — The success of the federal judiciary's Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is well documented: Hundreds of millions of pages of court documents retrieved online each year by customers who numbers are approaching 750,000. Less attention, however, has focused on PACER's impact on court staffs.

"It's definitely changed the way our office does business, and I think it's been a change for the better," said Monica Menier, clerk of the bankruptcy court in the Middle District of Louisiana.

"Back in the paper world, we constantly had law firm runners who came to the clerk's office to make copies of case files. They'd have to drive to the courthouse, find a parking place, feed the meter, and pay 50 cents per copy. Helping them consumed a lot of staff time," she said. "Those days are gone."

David Weaver, clerk of court and court administrator in the Eastern District of Michigan, offers a similar assessment. "We once had 12 case-searching terminals in a public area of our office, but eight of those terminals are gone. Very little walk-up business remains. We don't have file clerks anymore."

Bankruptcy Judge J. Rich Leonard in the Eastern District of North Carolina voiced one concern about the decrease in courthouse traffic. "I'm worried about what can be the complete absence of interaction between lawyers and their staffs and the court staff," he said.

"The level of camaraderie and shared professionalism incident to the delivery of paper files has been affected. Those sort of contacts are gone. The only person in our clerk's staff that many lawyers who practice before me know is our courtroom deputy, whom they see in court," Leonard said. "Things are more formalized now."

Staff realignment and space reallocation are two results, in many courts, of PACER's growing popularity.

Weaver, who reviews quarterly reports on PACER usage in his court to certify exempt users, said, "The volume is very striking. If PACER did not exist, these people would be calling us up and visiting the courthouse."

"I marvel at how seamless it is," he added. "There are very few problems, or, at least, problems that reach our ears. I guess the PACER Service Center handles the problems."

User fees generated by PACER pay for all infrastructure, security and management requirements of the program's secure public access network, PACER-Net. In addition, PACER revenue has funded the federal judiciary's move forward with electronic case filing.

Judge Leonard said PACER's growth has resulted in one change in his judicial behavior: He's more likely to insist on quicker responses from lawyers because "submitting a reply brief in two days is much easier than it was in a paper world."

"For some lawyers who live in distant towns, requesting a reply brief in two days really meant it had to be written by noon that second day so it could get to the courthouse by closing time. Now, as long as they hit the 'send' button by midnight of the second day, they've complied," he said. "We've made it much easier to respond."