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Fee Exemption Request for Researchers

Individual researchers working on defined research projects intended for scholarly work can request PACER fee exemptions from multiple courts. The request should be limited in scope, and not be intended for redistribution on the internet or for commercial purposes.

  1. Before completing the Multi-Court PACER Fee Exemption Request Form, please review the free resources available listed in the next section.
  2. Review the instructions for Multi-Court PACER Fee Exemption Request Form (pdf). To save a copy of the instructions for your records, right-click the link to the instructions and click “save link as” to download the PDF form to your computer.
  3. Download Multi-Court PACER Fee Exemption Request Form (pdf). Right-click the link to the form and click "Save link as" to download the PDF form to your computer.
  4. Open and complete the form with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
  5. Save the completed application.
  6. Send the completed application to: Multi-CourtExemptions@ao.uscourts.gov.

Please note: If you are seeking a fee exemption from a single court and/or for non-research purposes, you need to contact that court directly.

Free Resources for Court Records

  1. You can use up to $30 worth of PACER services per calendar quarter for free. 
  2. Judicial opinions are free and can be found: 
    1. On https://www.govinfo.gov where all posted judicial opinions may be searched through a single search engine across participating courts. 
    2. In the Written Opinions Report section of each court’s CM/ECF database (go to “Reports” and then “Written Opinions” before conducting a search); and 
    3. On some federal courts’ websites. 
  3. A tool that can help you define the data needs for your research is the Federal Court Cases Integrated Database (IDB) provided free of charge by the Federal Judicial Center. The IDB has case data (not documents) for criminal, civil, appellate, and bankruptcy cases that can help researchers refine their requests. In some cases, researchers have found this tool to meet their needs. 
  4. Aggregate statistical information on civil, criminal, bankruptcy, and appellate cases is available at https://www.uscourts.gov/data-new. 

Completed forms or any questions can be emailed to Multi-CourtExemptions@ao.uscourts.gov.