The Free Law Project is an American 501(c)(3) federal organization based in Oakland[1] that provides free access to primary legal documents, develops legal research tools, and supports academic research on legal corpora. [2] The Free Law Project has several initiatives that collect and share legal information, including the largest[3] collection of U.S. oral arguments,[4] the daily collection of new legal opinions from 200 courts and administrative agencies in the United States, the RECAP project, which collects PACER documents, and user-generated visualizations of Supreme Court citations. Their data helped the Wall Street Journal uncover 138 cases of conflicts of interest related to violations by U.S. federal judges. [3] [5] The RECAP archive is a searchable collection of millions of PACER documents and logs collected with our RECAP extensions for Firefox, Chrome and Safari. PACER is the government-run system in which almost all federal business legal documents are filed. The archive also contains all free PACER reviews. This unique archive was created to solve what we consider to be the PACER problem. If you are a PACER user, I highly recommend downloading RECAP. RECAP is available as a Mozilla Firefox add-on and Google Chrome extension. [11] For each PACER document, the software first checks whether it has already been downloaded by another user.
If there is no free version and the user purchases the document from PACER, a copy is automatically uploaded to the RECAP server, creating the database. [9] The original implementation of RECAP uploaded documents to the Internet Archive; Since late 2017, the Free Law Project has been uploading documents to the Free Law Project, promising to reflect this data quarterly in the Internet Archive. [12] RECAP is a free online archive and extension for Firefox, Chrome and Safari that enhances the use of PACER, the electronic public access system for the United States. Federal District Courts and Bankruptcy Courts. Initially, FLP will work on the day-to-day maintenance of RECAP, but over time, the organization will seek funding to integrate the project code and documents into FLP`s CourtListener platform. TTIP will continue to support RECAP and is pleased to have identified such appropriate partners to improve access to public court records. With this archive, you can finally search and download millions of PACER documents, including those that were originally scanned PDFs that we painstakingly convert to text. FLP co-founders Brian Carver and Michael Lissner are long-time advocates for open access to justice, bringing both passion and expertise to these issues. FLP will lead efforts to improve and sustain RECAP after the project`s creators leave the CITP to begin new phases of their careers. Recap is an invaluable resource for journalists, activists – and truly anyone interested in law and justice in the United States.
The work of the Free Law Project makes our courts accessible to all and reinforces a pillar of democracy that is often overlooked. Everyone should support and contribute to these efforts. RECAP[8] is software that allows users to automatically search for free copies of documents when searching the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) online database of U.S. federal court documents and help create a free alternative database. [9] It was created in 2009 by a team from Princeton University`s Center for Information Technology Policy and Harvard University`s Berkman Center,[8] and is now maintained as part of the Free Law Project. The name «RECAP» is derived from «PACER», written backwards. [10] CourtListener,[6][17] (like Free Law Project) is open source software «that allows the public to download any content in bulk,» which is an archive that hosts court transcripts. Some courts have recognized the free distribution of documents by RECAP.
A small handful of PACER users have free access (fee exemptions are granted by district), and one of the conditions of fee exemption generally requires that fee-exempt users not redistribute materials they receive under the exemption in accordance with Judicial Conference guidelines. [15] Some courts, such as the District Court for the District of Massachusetts, post a prominent reminder on its ECF page: «Fee-exempt PACER users must refrain from using RECAP.» [16] Citizens deserve open and easy access to all public court documents. Until public access becomes a matter of policy rather than blocked by PACER`s artificial paywall, independent efforts like RECAP continue to fill a critical gap in our ability to promote a more participatory and engaged democracy. Once installed, any waybill or PDF you purchase from the PACER District and Bankruptcy Court websites will be added to the RECAP archive. Everything someone else has added to the archive is available for free, directly in PACER itself. This repository was created by users of RECAP extensions. Learn more and install it on the RECAP homepage. Before founding RECAP, activist Aaron Swartz set up an automatic upload from an official entry point of the library to PACER.
Swartz uploaded 2.7 million documents, all of which are in the public domain and represent less than 1% of the documents in PACER. [14] These public domain documents were then uploaded to RECAP and made available to the public free of charge. However, the automated download triggered a government investigation. No criminal charges were laid because PACER had granted lawful access and the copied documents were publicly available and the case was closed. We also have an API and bulk data available for developers. For more information, please contact us. Finally, we make the RECAP archive available via an API or as mass data for journalists, researchers, startups and developers. Tens of thousands of people have used RECAP.
To join them, simply install it via the button above and then use PACER as you normally would. It`s as simple as that. If you don`t like it, you can always uninstall it. All of the Free Law Project`s work is open source and available online. This work was made possible through a partnership with Princeton`s Center for Information Technology Policy, the generous contributions of thousands of RECAP users, and many volunteers. Free Law Project, the nonprofit behind RECAP, is proud to host a search service and API for PACER content. If you are an organization that needs PACER content or a researcher looking for big data, please contact us. Install the free RECAP extensions for Firefox, Chrome and Safari to contribute to this archive. RECAP is a joint project of Princeton University`s Center for Information Technology Policy and the Free Law Project. This is one of many projects that are using the power of the Internet to increase government transparency.
Everything in the RECAP archive is also regularly uploaded to the Internet Archive, where it has a permanent home. That`s thousands of exempt documents every day. If you find this work useful, or if it saves you money on your PACER bill, please make a donation. Free Law Project was founded in 2013 by Michael Lissner and Brian Carver. [6] PACER continued to charge per page after the introduction of RECAP. [13] Thanks to our users and data consulting projects, the RECAP archive contains tens of millions of PACER documents, including all free reviews in PACER. Everything in the archive is fully searchable, including millions of pages originally scanned in PDF format. The Free Law Project has a number of initiatives, including: RECAP is led by Free Law Project co-founders Brian Carver and Michael Lissner. RECAP was developed by Harlan Yu, Steve Schultze, Timothy B. Lee and Ka-Ping Yee based on the principles outlined in Government Data and the Invisible Hand. We are pleased to announce that as of today, RECAP will operate as a joint project between CITP and Free Law Project (FLP), with FLP taking the lead in the maintenance and development of the system.