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9 PLL Persp. 1 (1997-1998)

handle is hein.lbr/aaplper0009 and id is 1 raw text is: PLL PERSPECTIVES THE QUARTERLY OF THE PRIVATE LAW LIBRARIES/SIS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF LAW LIBRARIES Volume 9 Issue 1 ELECTRONIC RETRIEVAL OF COURT DOCKETS AND DOCUMENTS by Margareta S. Knauff Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky Washington D.C. N THE BEGINNING THERE WAS PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). PACER allows the user to dial into a United States District Court (USDC), United States Court of Appeals (USCA) or United States Bankruptcy Court (USBC) docketing system and retrieve copies of dockets. However, PACER is far from perfect. The term PACER can be misleading - it implies that the system is uniform, which is not the case. There are several different programs running, depending on which court you dial into. Even within the same program dif- ferent courts have different versions, each with its own peculiar- ities. While there are similarities, each court has its system set up in a slightly different way. The bottom line is that while PAC- ER is a useful tool for retrieving dockets, its lack of consistency keeps it from being user friendly. COURTLINK IMPROVES UPON PACER After PACER came CourtLink, by Data West. Data West heard the complaints of PACER users about the difficulties of gaining access and keeping track of court phone numbers, as well as about its lack of user-friendliness, and developed CourtLink. CourtLink is a program which provides electronic access to court dockets of all PACER courts except the United States Courts of Appeals (that may change in the near future as CourtLink did not provide access to U.S. Bankruptcy Courts when it first debuted). CourtLink also provides access to Washington and Oregon state courts which is a logical step for Data West as a company based in Washington state. I hope to see more local courts added as Data West improves the product. CourtLink takes the headache out of using PACER: It worries about the changing phone num- bers, which courts are undergoing upgrades and are not avail- able, about the various modem speeds, the different login procedures and the different menus. The CourtLink user is pro- vided with a consistent search interface for retrieving dockets. CourtLink can be set up so that users must enter a client ID num- ber for billing purposes. Bills can be retrieved online and can be broken down by user or by client ID for easy billing While CourtLink does make it easier to search for dockets, it must work within the limitations of PACER. For the most part in the U.S. District Courts one can search for dockets only by party name or case number, as these are the only options the PACER program allows. CourtLink provides access only to dockets, not filings. To access CourtLink the user dials in and enters the search, then CourtLink dials the desired PACER court(s), performs the search and displays the results. Some PACER systems are set up to restrict the number of matches if one is searching by a ccmmon party name. For example, if one is searching for the party name Brown, the user may receive a message stating, Too many matches (45), please try again instead of a list of all the parties named Brown. The same search on CourtLink will receive the same result. It is important to keep in mind that CourtLink works with PACER, it does not replace it entirely. Of course, since CourtLink is providing improved access to PACER, it costs a little more. PACER currently costs $.60 per minute and can be accessed via any communications program. Many of the courts now have toll free numbers (800 or 888), so in those cases there are no communications charges. For CourtLink however, you must purchase the program: $49 per workstation for standalone, $395 for network use at one loca- tion. After that one time fee, the cost is $75.00 per hour con- nect time ($l.25 per minute) plus a surcharge of $.18 per minute for the time spent connected to a PACER court. The user is; not assessed connect time charges for downloading billing information or upgrades. CourtLink does offer discounts for off-peak use. During weekends and after 6 p.m. your local time, connect time is discounted to $60.00 per hour. The extra cost has been justified by the great benefits of CourtLink: It can be networked; it can be set up to force input of billing information; it provides interactive training via a CD-ROM and a well documented user guide; it can be continued on page 4 FALL 1997

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