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Public Access to Court Electronic Records

The PACER system allows any member of the bar or the public who has access to a computer to obtain civil and criminal docket records of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Office of the Clerk of Court. The user can obtain the complete electronic history of all cases that are contained in the civil/criminal docketing system (i.e., all civil cases filed since July 1, 1990, and all pending civil cases, except asbestos and prisoner cases, filed prior to July 1, 1990, and all criminal cases filed since July 1, 1992).

The PACER system will allow the remote end user to search a case by name or number and print the docket report on their printer. In addition, the PACER system will allow an end user to check recent activity. If there has been no recent activity, the PACER system will confirm that fact in seconds. The system will be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

To register for PACER, please see below. To login to PACER (U.S. District Court PACER), please click here.

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) Login Page

What Is PACER?

The United States Courts designed the CM/ECF (Case Management/Electronic Case Files) system. PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is implemented via the ECF portion of CM/ECF. Most courts offer electronic public access via registration with the PACER Service Center, the judiciary's centralized registration, billing, and technical support center. Electronic access to court records is available for the following services: U.S. district courts, U.S. bankruptcy courts, U.S. courts of appeal, and U.S. party/case index. Each court maintains a separate database with detailed case information for electronic access. Accessing and querying information from each service is comparable; however, a unique Internet address is required to access a specific jurisdiction.

Why Use PACER?

The PACER System offers an inexpensive, fast, and comprehensive case information service to any individual with a personal computer (PC), Web browser and Internet access. The PACER system permits you to request information about a particular individual or case. The data is displayed directly on your PC screen within a few seconds. The system is simple enough that little user training or documentation is required.

Available Information

The PACER System offers electronic access to case dockets to retrieve information such as:

  • Listing of all parties and participants including judges, attorneys, and trustees
  • Compilation of case related information such as cause of action, nature of suit, and dollar demand
  • Chronology of dates of case events entered in the case record
  • Claims registry
  • Listing of new cases each day in the bankruptcy court
  • Appellate court opinions
  • Judgments or case status
  • Types of documents filed for certain cases

U.S. Party/Case Index

The U.S. Party/Case Index is a national index for U.S. district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts. A small subset of information from each case will be transferred to the U.S. Party/Case Index each night. The system serves as a locator index for PACER. You may conduct nationwide searches to determine whether or not a party is involved in federal litigation. For detailed information on cases found while searching the U.S. Party/Case Index, you will need to access the PACER system for the particular jurisdiction where the case is located.

Availability

The PACER System is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can verify all updates to active and recently closed cases without having to make repeated trips to the court to review paper records. If there have been no updates, this can be confirmed in seconds.

What You Need

  • Personal computer
  • Compatible Web browser (CM/ECF has been tested with Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 and 9.)
  • Internet access

Cost

The cost for the service is $.10 per page. The fee is limited to 30 pages per document or docket (i.e., $3.00). You will be billed on a quarterly basis for time online. You will be allowed to enter a client code of your choosing each time you login to PACER to help facilitate managing the costs. The client code you enter will appear for each transaction on your quarterly statement.

To Register

To obtain a PACER login and password as well as detailed instructions on the operation of the PACER system, register for PACER on-line at the PACER Service Center. There is no cost to register. In the San Antonio area call (210) 301-6440. Outside the San Antonio area call (800) 676-6856. Or, write the PACER Service Center at:

PACER Service Center
PACER Registration
P.O. Box 780549
San Antonio, TX 78278-0549
pacer@psc.uscourts.gov