 Free Law Project Logo | |
| Abbreviation | FLP |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2013-09-24 |
| Founders | Michael Lissner, Brian Carver |
| Founded at | Emeryville,CA |
| Type | 501(c)(3) |
| 46-3342480 | |
| Registration no. | C3594588 |
| Legal status | Charity |
| Headquarters | Oakland, CA |
| Services | CourtListener, RECAP, Bots.law |
Executive Director | Michael Lissner |
| Michael Lissner, Brian Carver, Ansel Halliburton | |
| Website | free |
Free Law Project is aUnited States federal501(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[3]collection of Americanoral argument audio,[4] daily collection of newlegal opinions from 200 United States courts andadministrative bodies, the RECAP Project, which collects documents fromPACER, and user-generatedSupreme Court citationvisualizations. Their data helpedThe Wall Street Journal expose 138 cases ofconflict of interest cases regarding violations by federal judges.[3][5]
Free Law Project was founded in 2013 by Michael Lissner and Brian Carver.[6]
Free Law Project has a number of initiatives, including:
RECAP[11] 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 databasePACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), and to help build up a free alternative database.[12] It was created in 2009 by a team from Princeton University'sCenter for Information Technology Policy andHarvard University'sBerkman Center.[11] It is now maintained as part of the Free Law Project. The name "RECAP" derives from "PACER", spelled backward.[13]
RECAP is available as aMozilla Firefoxadd-on,Google Chrome extension, andSafari extension.[14] 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 theInternet 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.[15]
PACER continued charging per page fees after the introduction of RECAP.[16]
Prior to the creation of RECAP, activistAaron 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.[17] 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.[18] Some courts such as theDistrict Court for the District of Massachusetts display a prominent reminder on itsECF page: "fee exempt PACER users must refrain from the use of RECAP".[19]
CourtListener[6][20] is anopen source software project to archive and host court documents.
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.
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.
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.
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