Cyber Beat

Federal Courts Available On-line

The federal courts are finalizing electronic public access to federal court information. Electronic access to cases filed in the federal courts has been available to the public for approximately six years, however, the availability of this information was generally only known to attorneys who practice in federal court. Recently the Administrative office of the Courts, located in Washington, D.C., has provided a site on the World Wide Web that provides information about the services available. The site http:\\www.uscourts.gov provides a directory of electronic public access service telephone numbers. The directory also provides a summary of the services and information available from the Appellate, District and Bankruptcy Courts.

Except for a few web sites providing URL's to cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, and a few federal appellate courts with Internet sites, full access to court records is not available via the Internet. Instead, users with a personal computer or word processor and modem can access a court's docket and conduct searches of cases filed in a particular court by calling the individual court's PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) system.

In order to obtain access to a District Court, anyone interested in using this service must first call the PACER Service Center Electronic Bulletin Board located in San Antonio, Texas at 800- 676-6856 (toll free) and register for access to one or more courts. Once registered, the user can then access the database at a cost of .75 cents a minute. The PACER system does allow for word searches that lessen the difficulty of searches at a particular court site. However, if you aren't sure whether a case was filed in Miami or San Diego, you must be registered in and call both courts to search both databases. At .75 cents a minute, this can get expensive.

The federal government, including the judiciary, has been slow in providing access to information to the public electronically. Although the services identified above are a start, as mentioned, users must still access the databases of each court separately. This can be time consuming if a comprehensive search of information from several courts must be conducted.

Once you've become accustomed to the one-stop shopping available through Internet searches, you realize how unfortunate it is that one central database does not exist for the federal courts. Additionally, since each federal court operates as a separate entity, each determines what information should be included in its database and how that information should be stored. Therefore; if a search is conducted for all lawsuits filed against a government entity, corporation or individual in Miami, Florida; the name of the government entity, corporation or individual may not be entered into the database in the same manner in San Diego, California. Although word searches make this process easier, without standardized data entry policies case information can be overlooked.

Although Internet accessibility to court databases is being discussed, when and if this will ever be available is unknown. At this time, the concentration is to complete the separate on-line system concept. Users will have to wait for the judiciary to determine that the millions of dollars spent to set up the PACER system, (when the Internet was already in place), is not serving the public in the most expeditious, cost-effective manner. Congress will then be asked to provide additional funding, possibly millions, to buy newer, more advanced equipment, to bring the judiciary to the Internet. Until then, only minimal information will be available via the Internet.

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