pacersdk

A Python SDK for interacting with the PACER Case Locator (PCL) API.

What Is PACER?

PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is a service of the U.S. federal judiciary that provides electronic public access to federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy court records. It allows users to search and retrieve case and docket information filed in federal courts.

Key features of PACER include:

  • Nationwide access to court records across all U.S. federal courts.

  • Case indexing and search through the PACER Case Locator (PCL).

  • Document retrieval for pleadings, motions, orders, and opinions.

  • Fee-based system with exemptions for low-usage access and QA environments.

Use Case and Audience

This SDK is intended for research and educational purposes only. It enables users to perform structured queries against PACER’s public RESTful API to retrieve metadata about federal cases and parties.

Typical users include:

  • Legal researchers and academics

  • Educators and students studying legal systems

  • Developers experimenting with court data

Quickstart

Install the SDK:

pip install -U pacersdk

Perform a basic case search:

from pacersdk import PCLClient

client = PCLClient(
    username="your_username",
    password="your_password",
    environment="qa"
)
results = client.case.search({
    "caseTitle": "Smith",
    "courtId": ["cacd"]
})

Developer Testing Environment

For testing purposes, a separate PACER QA environment is available. It contains test data and does not incur billing. We strongly recommend using it during development

Resources

Contents

Tutorials:

Library Reference:

Project Information: