Applications Open for PACER User Group

The federal Judiciary is accepting applications for membership in its public user group that provides advice and feedback on ways to improve electronic public access (EPA) services.

The EPA Public User Group consists of up to 12 members representing a cross section of people who use the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system to access federal court records, including representatives of the legal sector, commercial enterprises, the media, academia, government agencies, and the public.

The application period is open until Sept. 2, 2024. Interested individuals should fill out an application form and submit it to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO). The two-year terms begin on Jan. 1, 2025.

The EPA Public User Group typically holds an annual, in-person meeting in Washington, D.C., and additional meetings virtually, as needed. Meeting agendas and summaries are publicly available.

Members are selected by the AO based on user type, experience accessing court electronic records through PACER, frequency of usage, an account status in good standing, and a commitment to collecting feedback from peers. Current members of the group may reapply for a second term. Members can serve no more than two consecutive terms.

The EPA Public User Group will serve as the Judiciary continues its effort to modernize the Case Management and Electronic Case Files system and PACER, the portal used by the public to access court records in that system. The planned improvements include improving search functionality in PACER, so users can search across the Judiciary more easily for near real-time court data, documents, and docket entries.

The group, first formed in 2020, has contributed to several improvements to the Judiciary’s electronic public access services. Recommendations from the group were pivotal in the creation of a pro se user page on the PACER website, improvements in the PACER Case Locator, and raising awareness among courts of the importance of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. Most recently, the EPA Public User Group aided in refining the requirements for Case Preview, a new feature in the PACER interface, which will provide users with a case summary.

PACER allows instantaneous access to nearly all documents filed by judges and the parties in all U.S. courts of appeals, district courts, and bankruptcy courts. It provides a central access point to more than 1 billion documents housed at more than 200 federal courts. In operation for more than 30 years, PACER has about 4.7 million user accounts.