Technology

PACER Sucks More Than Usual... And We Know Exactly Who To Blame

Have you been struggling to get court documents lately? You're not alone.

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Close up view of burning laptopPACER, the federal court system’s data repository, slows to a crawl mid-mornings and it seems to be getting worse. Everyone has experienced it, and most write it off as either a gremlin or an unavoidable byproduct of running the federal judiciary on a warmed over Geocities page.

But it turns out, it’s not that at all! From Law360:

Recent mid-morning slowdowns of the federal courts database known as PACER in the Southern District of New York are caused by a profusion of data miners that ply their trade around the same time each day, a district official confirmed Tuesday.

Yes, it’s that every news organization and legal research entity decides to do its massive scrape job at the exact same time that every bleary eyed litigator shows up to work and check their dockets. It’s the sort of drain on the system that could get worse if, say, a moron decided to put “all court cases” into an AI because he’s tired of losing real court cases and wants to replace the justice system with an algorithm.

“This is why you can’t have free PACER!” the federal judiciary is undoubtedly saying despite the fact that this problem is happening now and the people doing it will continue regardless of the fees associated. Paywalling out normal people because the New York Times causes a bottleneck isn’t a just strategy for a public and transparent justice system.

For years, the courts used PACER fees as a slush fund instead of making the comprehensive investments necessary to bring the site up to — I won’t say the 2020s, because that might be too ambitious — at least the early aughts. The judiciary fought free PACER for years, arguing that opening up the system would cost them $2 billion. It turned out to be much, much less.

But PACER needs to do something. Identifying data miners and throttling their accounts until close of business in the United States could at least move the problem to a more manageable window. The Southern District of New York, arguably the most newsworthy court in America — at least outside of Amarillo — is working with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to find an answer.

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Until then, treat this problem the same way this country treats recycling or power conservation… restrain your ultimately inconsequential use of the system as a purely symbolic gesture while megacorporations continue causing the problem.

It’s Not Your Imagination, SDNY Attys: PACER Really Is Slow [Law360]

Earlier: Free PACER Would Cost $2B And Other Completely Made Up Garbage The Federal Judiciary Is Peddling
When Federal Judges Said Free PACER Would Cost $2B, They Were Completely Full Of Crap

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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