Federal Court Records for Journalists: How to Find, Read, and Follow a Case

A reporter rarely needs a research platform. You need one case, one document, and enough confidence in what it says to describe it accurately before the competition does. This guide covers that whole loop: find the docket, get the filing, read it right, and know when the next one lands. PacerPlus does all four in one place. Searching is free and needs no account. The docket and its filings come with the subscription, and any filing the RECAP Archive already holds costs no pages.

Find the case in the first five minutes

Most stories start from a press release, a tip, or a competitor's piece. All three usually give you a name and a district. Sometimes they give you a case number, which is the thing you actually want.

If you have a case number

A federal case number reads like 1:24-cr-00123. The digit before the colon is the court's division, the two digits after it are the filing year, the letters are the case type (cr criminal, cv civil, mj a magistrate matter such as a complaint or warrant), and the rest is a sequence number. Sequence numbers restart in every court, so the same number can exist in several districts. Type it into the search box with the district filter set and you land on one case. Keep the court and the number together in your notes; a transfer or an appeal assigns a new number.

If you only have a name

A name search is fuzzy, and that is where deadline searches go wrong. Parties appear exactly as they were captioned: a company may be filed under a subsidiary, a person may or may not carry a middle initial, and one defendant can show up under several spellings. If the first search comes back empty, search a shorter fragment of the name and narrow with the district and filing-year filters, rather than adding more words.

A wrong guess costs nothing here. In the government's own PACER Case Locator it costs money, because PACER bills a search on the pages it generates even when it finds nothing.

Which court

The district is where the crime was alleged or the dispute arose. A Justice Department or U.S. Attorney's release names the office that brought the case, and that office maps to one district. If the charging agency is a district attorney or a state attorney general, it is a state case and no federal index will find it. Appeals live in the 13 courts of appeals under a different number format, such as 24-1234.

The full walkthrough, including the free routes and what to do when nothing turns up, is in how to find a federal court case.

Read the docket like a clerk

A docket is the numbered list of everything filed in a case, in order. Each entry carries a date, a number, and a description, and most link to a PDF. Four kinds of entry trip up people who are new to it:

• Minute entrieshave no document at all. They are the clerk's note of something that happened in the courtroom, and a line like "Arraignment held; plea of not guilty entered" is often the news itself, and there is nothing to download to get it. See minute entry.
• Sealed entries show on the docket, but the document will not open. You cannot get it from the clerk, from RECAP, or from us. Watch for an unsealing order; news organizations move to unseal all the time, and that motion appears on the docket too. See sealed document.
• Redacted documentsopen, with parts blacked out: account numbers, minors' names, addresses, and sometimes the names of cooperating witnesses. See redaction.
• "Terminated" and "closed" are bookkeeping. A terminated party or motion has been resolved; a closed case has a judgment entered. Neither means the appeal is over.

The entries that carry a criminal case

In rough order, and with the filings most worth opening in bold:

• Criminal complaint, usually with an agent's sworn affidavit attached. This is often the richest narrative document in the whole case, because it has to persuade a judge that there was probable cause.
• Indictment, the grand jury's charges, which replace the complaint. A superseding indictment replaces the indictment, often adding counts or defendants.
• Information: charges filed by the prosecutor without a grand jury. For a felony, the defendant has to waive indictment first, so a felony information usually signals a plea deal. Treat it as a signal, and confirm it with a plea agreement or a change-of-plea entry on the docket before you report one. Misdemeanors need no waiver, so an information there signals nothing.
• Initial appearance, arraignment, and the detention hearing, most of it visible as minute entries.
• Plea agreement and the change-of-plea hearing. The agreement is where the agreed facts and the sentencing range live.
• Sentencing memoranda from both sides, filed in the weeks before the sentencing hearing. Character letters, loss figures, and the government's account of the conduct are all here.
• Judgment, the one-page-per-count record of the sentence, followed by any notice of appeal.

The entries that carry a civil case

• Complaint: one side's allegations, not findings. Everything in it is what the plaintiff says happened.
• Answer or, more often, a motion to dismiss, and then the order deciding it. The order is the first time a judge says anything about the merits.
• Discovery fights: motions to compel and protective orders. Dull to most readers, but exhibits attached to them are where internal documents surface.
• Summary judgment briefs and the order on them, then trial, verdict, and final judgment.

Our legal glossary defines more than a hundred of these terms in plain English, one page each.

Get the document without paying for it twice

We check RECAP before charging a page

RECAP is a free archive of federal court filings run by the nonprofit Free Law Project. When anyone with the RECAP browser extension buys a document from PACER, the extension sends a copy to the archive. In a case that is in the news, that means the filing you want is often free within hours of being docketed, because a dozen other newsrooms bought it before you. See RECAP Archive.

You do not have to go looking for it. When you open a filing on PacerPlus, we check RECAP before spending a PACER page, so a document RECAP already holds costs you nothing, and that public copy is the one to link in your story. A PACER link asks your reader to log in and pay.

PACER, the $30 waiver, and the missing press exemption

When the document is not in RECAP, PACER is the source. It charges 10 cents a page for documents and docket sheets, with a cap of 30 pages, or $3.00, on any single document. Written opinions are free. If your account's total for a calendar quarter is $30 or less, the whole quarter is waived; cross $30 and the entire quarter is billed. A reporter following one or two cases usually never sees an invoice. Those figures hold through December 31, 2026. On January 1, 2027 the rate becomes 12 cents, the per-document cap stays at 30 pages so it becomes $3.60, and the waiver threshold rises to $40. The full breakdown is in our guide to PACER fees.

Courts can exempt some users from PACER fees, but the categories are indigent parties, pro bono attorneys, academic researchers, bankruptcy trustees, and 501(c)(3) nonprofits. The fee schedule goes further and names members of the media as a group courts should not exempt, so no press credential changes that.

Source: PACER Pricing: How Fees Work, Can I get a PACER fee exemption?, and the Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule

That gap is what the PacerPlus subscription covers. It includes 150 PACER pages a month at PACER's own rate, with the 30-page cap applied and RECAP checked first, so your pages go only to filings nobody has bought yet. Plans are on the pricing page.

Transcripts and audio

Transcripts do not appear on PACER until 90 days after they are produced. Before that, you buy the transcript from the court reporter, whose name and contact details are in the docket entry announcing it. On PACER, transcripts are 10 cents a page with no 30-page cap, so a multi-day trial transcript costs real money. Where a court records proceedings digitally, the audio file is $2.40 on PACER.

Follow the case without refreshing the docket

A filing appears on the court's own docket within minutes of the attorney submitting it. The nationwide PACER Case Locator index updates overnight, and RECAP gets the document only when someone buys it. None of those is a notification, which is why reporters end up reloading a docket page all afternoon.

The alternative is a PacerAlert. Put one on the case and it emails you when a scheduled check finds new activity. Priority case monitors are scheduled for 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern each day. The subscription includes 10 of them, enough to cover every case on a beat, and the details are on the case alerts page.

Also read the dates. A scheduling order sets the deadlines for the whole case, and minute entries record the next hearing date. Those are the days to plan coverage around.

Get the words right

This is the section an editor will thank you for. Court records are precise, and the mistakes that draw corrections are almost always a matter of using one term where the record says another.

• Charged is not convicted. An indictmentor a complaint is an accusation. Write "charged with" or "accused of" until there is a plea or a verdict.
• A civil complaint alleges.Nothing in it has been tested. "The lawsuit claims" or "the complaint alleges", never "the company did".
• Indictment versus information. A grand jury returns an indictment. A prosecutor files an information. On a felony, the defendant had to waive indictment first, which usually signals a plea. Write "pleaded guilty" only once the docket shows the plea.
• Pleaded, not pled. A defendant pleaded not guilty at arraignment. A guilty plea is entered at a change-of-plea hearing, and the sentence usually comes months later.
• Magistrate judge versus district judge. A magistrate judge handles initial appearances, detention, and warrants. The district judgetries the case and imposes the sentence. The title is "U.S. Magistrate Judge", never "Magistrate".
• Sealed versus redacted. Sealed means you cannot see it. Redacted means you can see all but the blacked-out parts. Do not describe a redacted filing as sealed.
• Verdict versus judgment. A jury returns a verdict. The judge enters the judgment, and in a criminal case that is the sentence.
• Dismissed with or without prejudice. With prejudice, the claim cannot be refiled. Without, it can. Then read what the order dismissed. A single claim leaves the rest of the case going. A complaint dismissed with leave to amend keeps the case open for a new complaint. Only dismissal of the whole action closes the case, and even then the plaintiff can file a new one.

Who is the judge

The docket names the assigned judge, and the judge's background is part of most stories: who appointed them, how long they have been on the bench, and what kinds of cases they see. Our federal judge pages cover the district and appellate bench with that context on one page per judge, and judge analytics are unlimited on the subscription.

Common questions from reporters

Do journalists get free PACER access?

No. Courts can waive PACER fees for a few groups, and the fee schedule names members of the media as a group they should not exempt. The quarterly waiver is $30 through 2026 and $40 from January 1, 2027. Searching here is free. On the subscription, any filing RECAP already holds opens without spending a page, so the included pages go only to documents nobody has bought yet.

How quickly does a new filing show up?

On the court's docket, within minutes of filing. In the nationwide PACER Case Locator, overnight. In RECAP, whenever the first person with the extension buys it. A docket monitor is the only one of these that tells you rather than waits for you.

Can I get a sealed document?

Not from any public source. Sealed filings become available only when the court unseals them, which is often the result of a motion by a news organization. Both the motion and the order appear on the docket, so a monitor on the case will tell you when it happens.

How do I find the case from a press release?

Take the defendant's name and the office named in the release, which tells you the district. Search the last name, set the search to criminal, and filter to that district and the current year. If the release quotes a case number, search that with the district filter set instead; it lands on one case with no guessing.

Can I link my readers to the PACER document?

You can, but they will hit a login page and a fee. Link the public RECAP copy instead, and quote the court and docket number in the story so anyone can find the source.

What does it cost to use PacerPlus for this?

Searching is free and needs no account. Opening a docket and its filings takes the subscription. When you open a document that has to come from PACER, we count it against your included pages at PACER's own rate, apply the 30-page cap, and check RECAP first. The $199.99 monthly subscription includes 150 PACER pages, 10 PacerAlerts, and unlimited judge analytics. If a big month runs you out of pages, extra packs are $9.99 for 30 pages. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.