Free Law Project Explained

Free Law Project
Abbreviation:FLP
Formation:2013-09-24
Founders:Michael Lissner, Brian Carver
Founding Location:Emeryville, CA
Type:501(c)(3)
Tax Id:46-3342480
Registration Id:C3594588
Status:Charity
Headquarters:Oakland, CA
Services:CourtListener, RECAP, Bots.law
Leader Title:Executive Director
Leader Name:Michael Lissner
Board Of Directors:Michael Lissner, Brian Carver, Ansel Halliburton

Free Law Project is a United States federal 501(c)(3) Oakland-based[1] nonprofit that provides free access to primary legal materials, develops legal research tools, and supports academic research on legal corpora.[2] Free Law Project has several initiatives that collect and share legal information, including the largest collection of American oral argument audio,[3] daily collection of new legal opinions from 200 United States courts and administrative bodies, the RECAP Project, which collects documents from PACER, and user-generated Supreme Court citation visualizations. Their data helped The Wall Street Journal expose 138 cases of conflict of interest cases regarding violations by federal judges.[4] [5]

Free Law Project was founded in 2013 by Michael Lissner and Brian Carver.[6]

Initiatives

Free Law Project has a number of initiatives, including:

RECAP

RECAP[9] is software which allows users to automatically search for free copies of documents during a search in the fee-based online U.S. federal court document database PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), and to help build up a free alternative database. It was created in 2009 by a team from Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy and Harvard University's Berkman Center,[9] and is now maintained as part of the Free Law Project. The name "RECAP" derives from "PACER", spelled backward.[10]

RECAP is available as a Mozilla Firefox add-on, Google Chrome extension, and Safari extension.[11] For each PACER document, the software will first check if it has already been uploaded by another user. If no free version exists and the user purchases the document from PACER, it will automatically upload a copy to the RECAP server, thereby building the database.[12] The original RECAP implementation uploaded documents to the Internet Archive; as of late 2017, the Free Law Project version now uploads documents to the Free Law Project, with a promise to mirror that data to the Internet Archive on a quarterly basis.[13]

PACER continued charging per page fees after the introduction of RECAP.[14]

Prior to the creation of RECAP, activist Aaron Swartz set up an automatic download from an official library entry point to PACER.

Swartz downloaded 2.7 million documents, all public domain, representing less than 1 percent of the documents in PACER.[15] These public domain documents were later uploaded to RECAP and made available to the public for free.

However, the automated downloading triggered a government investigation. No criminal charges were filed, because PACER had provided lawful access and the documents copied were in the public domain, and the case was closed.

Some courts have acknowledged RECAP's free distribution of documents. A small handful of PACER users receive fee-exempt access (fee waivers are granted on a district-by-district basis), and a condition of the fee waiver generally requires that fee exempt users not further distribute documents they receive under the waiver, pursuant to Judicial Conference policy.[16] Some courts such as the District Court for the District of Massachusetts display a prominent reminder on its ECF page: "fee exempt PACER users must refrain from the use of RECAP".[17]

CourtListener

CourtListener[6] [18] is an open source software project to archive and host court documents.

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: . Crime and Courts . Justin Rau . October 5, 2021 . November 21, 2022.
  2. Web site: Free Law Project . 2016-06-21.
  3. Web site: Milestone: CourtListener has 365 Days of Continuous Oral Argument Listening. 2016-06-21 . 2016-06-08.
  4. News: . How the Journal Found Judges' Violations of Law on Conflicts . Coulter Jones . James V. Grimaldi . Joe Palazzolo . September 28, 2021 . November 24, 2022.
  5. News: The Wall Street Journal. The Federal Law That 138 Judges Have Broken. this guy out in Oakland .. works for this nonprofit called the Free Law Project .. project going on for several years, to obtain from the administrative office of the courts, every financial disclosure for every federal judge, and digitize it.. Kate Linebaugh . October 1, 2021 . November 25, 2021.
  6. News: . Free Law Project provides access to legal materials and research for public . The Free Law Project, a new California nonprofit, launched Tuesday and will provide free and easy access to legal material and research for anyone to download. . Taylor A. Vega . September 29, 2013 . November 25, 2022.
  7. Web site: Judge and Disclosure Database . Free Law Project . 2024-03-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240122120123/https://free.law/projects/judge-db . 2024-01-22 . The database contains information about more than sixteen thousand state and federal judges, making it a treasure trove for those wishing to do judicial analytics..
  8. Web site: Announcing a New Open Database of Court Information, IDs, and Parsers . March 10, 2020 . 2021-03-17.
  9. Web site: RECAP Documents Now More Searchable Via Internet Archive . RECAP The Law . 2013 . Center for Information Technology Policy. https://free.law/2010/04/19/recap-documents-now-more-searchable-via-internet-archive/ Note this lacks comments -->. https://web.archive.org/web/20160601170043/https://www.recapthelaw.org/2010/04/19/recap-documents-now-more-searchable-via-internet-archive/#menu. June 1, 2016 . May 31, 2013.
  10. News: . McCullagh . Declan . Declan McCullagh . Plug-in opens up federal courts, with your help . May 16, 2017 . August 14, 2009 . en.
  11. Web site: RECAP Project — Turning PACER Around Since 2009 . Free Law Project.
  12. News: . Bobbie . Johnson . Recap: cracking open US courtrooms . 11 November 2009 . London.
  13. Web site: The Next Version of RECAP is Now Live. Lissner . Michae l. November 13, 2017 . March 5, 2018.
  14. News: Singel . Ryan . October 5, 2009 . FBI Investigated Coder for Liberating Paywalled Court Records . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20230515021116/https://www.wired.com/2009/10/swartz-fbi/ . May 15, 2023 . January 12, 2013 . . Condé Nast.
  15. Web site: Lee . Timothy B.. The inside story of Aaron Swartz's campaign to liberate court filings. Ars Technica . February 8, 2013. May 31, 2013.
  16. Web site: A Complete Chronology of PACER Fees and Policies . Lissner . Michael . April 13, 2017 . March 5, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180306202448/https://free.law/2017/04/13/a-complete-chronology-of-pacer-fees-and-policies/ . 2018-03-06 . live.
  17. Web site: Welcome to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts . United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts . Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts . February 14, 2024.
  18. News: . I Read Court Documents for Fun. Hear Me Out. . Tarpley Hitt . December 1, 2020 . November 25, 2022.

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