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PACER: Access and Education Program

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The following is a guest post by Debora Keysor, a Legal Reference Specialist in our Public Services Division.

Starting July 1, the Law Library of Congress will be one of two law libraries to serve as test hosts of the Access and Education Program for PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). Working in collaboration, the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO), and the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) established an education program that is intended to result in more proficient public users of PACER.  It is also intended to foster a greater awareness of and access to PACER.

PACER is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and the PACER Case Locator via the Internet. PACER use is limited to registered users. Anyone, however, can register to use the service. User fees are applied to all users of the service, unless they are waived by a court, at a rate of $0.08 per page retrieved. This applies to both the pages of search results and the pages of documents retrieved. If a total of less than $10.00 worth of charges in any given quarter is accrued, fees are waived for that quarter.

The Law Library of Congress will be offering at least one (free) training class per quarter for the general public, so look for that announcement in the near future!

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