How to look up attorney on pacer??

[jessegirl]

Hi everyone, how can I look up my attorney on Pacer to see how his other cases have gone? I noticed a few people saying that they seen there attorneys other cases on pacer. Thanks

[Help!]

Not sure if PACER in your district looks like mine, but when I choose "QUERY" at the top of the screen I can search by case #, SS#, Last Name, First Name, etc. I put in his last name, choose "Attorney" under type and all of his cases appear. There were thousands of cases to be displayed (including his own), so I started checking the "Open Cases Only" box on the same screen. Be careful to keep track of the charges, though, as it's easy to run up a big PACER bill browsing.

[jessegirl]

Thanks help. Gesh, you are right when I put in the attorney name it came up woth 2600 cases. He already had 200 cases already for 2008. Needless to say that costs me so money, but atleast i can see he does ALOT of BK's. Thanks again for the information.

[TEW]

I just paid pacer 34 bucks cuz I was obsessing
hows it going jesse

[justbroke]

DO NOT EVER SEARCH BY ATTORNEY IN PACER!!!


This will cost you some money. You just learned what happens, and you returned only 2,600 cases. I performed a query which had nearly 8,000 cases.

PACER charges you by the page. While "documents" are limited to charges on the first 30 pages only ($2.40), I have consistently been charged actual number of pages, when performing large queries. I had a couple of queries which cost me $13.80 together. (Others state that they were only charged for 30 pages, but I can prove that I was charged for 83 pages when searching for a local attorney!!!)

Actually, I just looked, and one query I performed returned 223 pages. Yes, that's not a typo! That query... not even looking at cases... cost me $17.84!!!!! And PACER billed me 268 pages that session.

My pacer bill was $240 I think, last quarter.

[TEW]

good tip Justbroke

[hopingforsanity]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is this pacer that I have been reading about here on different threads?

[justbroke]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is this pacer that I have been reading about here on different threads?

PACER stands for, I believe, Public Access (to) Court Electronic Records. It was developed for the U.S. District Court and is used by both the U.S. District Court and U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

It's basically an electronic docket system / case management system which allows all parties (whether an interested party or not) to access the "public" information on any case. There are part of it (which is really called CM/ECF now) which allows an entirely electronic docket and filing system for the court. This allows attorneys and other so-privileged people (including the court) to file pleadings, set hearing dates, perform service of pleadings/responses on other entities connected to the system, etc.

Think of it as a paperless environment for the court, with mandatory participation from practicing attorneys.

[hopingforsanity]

But their is a fee for this?

[TEW]

$.08 per page its a great idea to have it. thats how pepole know what is going on with thire case

[HHM]

But their is a fee for this?

Keep in mind, what PACER thinks is a page and what you may think of as a page are different.

For exemple, on PACER, if you pulled up THIS forum thread, it would count as 10 pages because there are 10 entries.

[bcvw]

I know JustBroke had a bad experience with looking up his attorney and having to pay a lot of money, but I did the same thing a few weeks ago and was only charged the maximum 30 pages for a total of $2.40 (I have the printed pages and there are 55). I have no idea what I did differently than JustBroke.

[justbroke]

Even worse HHM. For queries, there is a page charge for every (approximately) 30 results. So, if your docket screen has 100 items, as mine does, you're charged for 3 pages... $0.24... just for viewing your docket!

[bcvw]

I just looked at my PACER account records and it shows the attorney query cost me .08 (I recall it said there were 55 pages to view and I would be charged to accept them for viewing) and when I downloaded the 55 pages, they charged me $2.40.

[justbroke]

It could be a version (CM/ECF) issue. Our District has delayed the upgrade to the latest version. We are on v3.1.7, and the new version is v3.2. I wonder if that has something to do with it.

There is a difference between queries and documents. However, I have been billed much higher for long queries. I do only get hit with $2.40 if a document only has 30 pages. However, if a query is over 30 pages, I get charged for each page at $0.08 with no maximum.