Free Law Project

Free Law Project has a number of initiatives, including:

• CourtListener.com,{{cite Q|Q117745639}} which provides a searchable and API-accessible website with court dockets, 900,000 minutes of oral argument recordings, more than eight thousand judges, and more than three million opinions. All of the opinions on Court Listener are interlinked by a citator, and the graph of citations is available via an API.
• RECAP Project,{{cite Q|Q7276289}} which allows users to automatically search for free copies of documents during a search in the fee-based online US legal database PACER, creating a free alternative database at the Internet Archive and Court Listener.
• Judge and Appointer Database, which provides biographical and electoral information about more than 16,000 American judges and appointors. {{cite web |url=https://free.law/projects/judge-db |title=Judge and Disclosure Database |website=Free Law Project |access-date=2024-03-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240122120123/https://free.law/projects/judge-db |archive-date=2024-01-22 |quote=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.}}
• Database of Reporters, which provides information about more than 400 legal reporters.
• Courts-DB, which provides information about more than 700 US courts.{{cite web |url=https://free.law/2020/03/10/courts-db-a-new-open-database/ |title=Announcing a New Open Database of Court Information, IDs, and Parsers |date=March 10, 2020 |access-date=2021-03-17}} All of Free Law Project's work is open source and available online.

RECAP{{cite web

|url=https://www.recapthelaw.org/2010/04/19/recap-documents-now-more-searchable-via-internet-archive

|title=RECAP Documents Now More Searchable Via Internet Archive |work=RECAP The Law |date=2013

|publisher=Center for Information Technology Policy|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160601170043/https://www.recapthelaw.org/2010/04/19/recap-documents-now-more-searchable-via-internet-archive/#menu

|archive-date=June 1, 2016 |access-date=May 31, 2013}} 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. It is now maintained as part of the Free Law Project. The name "RECAP" derives from "PACER", spelled backward.{{cite news

|publisher=CNET

|last=McCullagh |first=Declan |author-link=Declan McCullagh

|title=Plug-in opens up federal courts, with your help

|url=https://www.cnet.com/news/plug-in-opens-up-federal-courts-with-your-help

|accessdate=May 16, 2017 |date=August 14, 2009 |language=en}}

RECAP is available as a Mozilla Firefox add-on, Google Chrome extension, and Safari extension.{{cite web

|url=https://free.law/recap |title=RECAP Project — Turning PACER Around Since 2009

|author=Free Law Project}} 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.{{cite news |work=The Guardian

|first=Bobbie |last=Johnson

|url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/11/recap-us-courtrooms

|title=Recap: cracking open US courtrooms

|date=11 November 2009 |location=London}} 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.{{cite web|url=https://free.law/2017/11/13/the-next-version-of-recap-is-now-live/#content|title=The Next Version of RECAP is Now Live|last=Lissner|first=Michae l|date=November 13, 2017|access-date=March 5, 2018|archive-date=March 6, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180306202428/https://free.law/2017/11/13/the-next-version-of-recap-is-now-live/#content|url-status=dead}}

PACER continued charging per page fees after the introduction of RECAP.{{cite news |last=Singel |first=Ryan |date=October 5, 2009 |title=FBI Investigated Coder for Liberating Paywalled Court Records |url=https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/swartz-fbi |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230515021116/https://www.wired.com/2009/10/swartz-fbi/ |archive-date=May 15, 2023 |access-date=January 12, 2013 |magazine=Wired |publisher=Condé Nast}}

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.{{cite web

|last=Lee |first=Timothy B.

|title=The inside story of Aaron Swartz's campaign to liberate court filings

|work=Ars Technica |date=February 8, 2013

|url=https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/the-inside-story-of-aaron-swartzs-campaign-to-liberate-court-filings

|access-date=May 31, 2013}} 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, 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.{{cite web |url=https://free.law/2017/04/13/pacer-fee-history/ |title=A Complete Chronology of PACER Fees and Policies |last=Lissner |first=Michael |date=April 13, 2017 |access-date=March 5, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180306202448/https://free.law/2017/04/13/a-complete-chronology-of-pacer-fees-and-policies/ |archive-date=2018-03-06 |url-status=live}} 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".{{cite web |url=https://ecf.mad.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/ShowIndex.pl |title=Welcome to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts |website=United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts |publisher=Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts |access-date=February 14, 2024}}

CourtListener{{cite news |newspaper=The New York Times

|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/magazine/i-read-court-documents-for-fun-hear-me-out.html

|title=I Read Court Documents for Fun. Hear Me Out.

|author=Tarpley Hitt |date=December 1, 2020 |access-date=November 25, 2022}} is an open source software project to archive and host court documents.

• Free Access to Law Movement
• {{section link|Public.Resource.Org#Access to United States legal resources}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{Official website}}
• {{ProPublicaNonprofitExplorer|463342480}}
• [https://www.courtlistener.com/recap CourtListener] provides free access to federal court documents that someone has already purchased for RECAP / CourtListener and invites users to purchase a copy of others for CourtListener / RECAP.
• [https://free.law/recap/ RECAP The Law Project homepage]
• [https://free.law/projects/judge-db/ Judge and Appointer Database]
• {{github|freelawproject}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:American legal websites

Category:Free Access to Law Movement

Category:Free Firefox WebExtensions

Category:Google Chrome extensions

Category:Legal organizations based in the United States

Category:Non-profit organizations based in the United States

Category:Online companies of the United States

Category:Organizations established in 2013

Category:2009 establishments in the United States