Free PACER?

Are you one of those cheapskates who can't afford $.08 per page just to see how brilliantly some lawyer cites Iqbal in a boilerplate motion to dismiss?

Well, your prayers have been answered (h/t to a loyal reader):

The Solution: RECAP, a Firefox-only plugin, that rides along as one usually uses PACER — but it automatically checks if the document you want is already in its own database. The plug-in’s tagline, ‘Turning PACER around,’ alludes to the fact that its name comes from spelling PACER backwards. RECAP’s database is being seeded with millions of bankruptcy and Federal District Court documents, which have been donated, bought or gotten for free by open-government advocate Carl Malamud and fellow travelers such as Justia.

And if the document you request isn’t already in the public archive, then RECAP adds the ones you purchase to the public repository.

The plug-in was released by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, coded by Harlan Yu and Tim Lee, under the direction of noted computer science professor Ed Felten.

That’s a pretty good hack, but it’s still just a stop-gap measure until the federal courts figure out that in the age of the internet, charging citizens to search and read public documents should be a federal crime.

Should be fun until Judge Moreno finds out!