Let Users Donate Their Unused PACER Capacity

[dalelotts]

Allow users to dedicate some or all of their unused quarterly PACER capacity to retrieve missing documents for RECAP.

Motivation

Many useful court documents remain unavailable in RECAP until someone happens to buy them through PACER and upload them.

This feature would create a simple way for users—especially occasional PACER users, including many pro se litigants—to help free documents they do not personally need.

MVP

1. User logs in
2. User sets a quarterly amount available for use
3. CourtListener checks open requests for missing documents
4. The system selects requests that fit within the available amount
5. The documents are retrieved via PACER
6. The documents are uploaded to RECAP
7. The requests are marked fulfilled

Fallback

If no open requests fit the available amount, the system could use the remaining capacity on the most useful missing documents based on simple priority rules.

Why it seems valuable

It turns passive support for public access into a concrete workflow and could help expand RECAP faster without requiring users to manually choose documents one by one.

Open questions

• Should this only fulfill explicit user requests, or also system-selected high-value gaps?
• Should selection be first-in-first-out, most-requested, lowest-cost, or some other priority model?
• Is a general pool enough for phase one, or is direct sponsorship also needed?

Brief note

Separate from the product idea itself: because Free Law Project is a nonprofit, it may be worth exploring whether PACER expenditures through a feature like this could have any charitable tax significance in some circumstances. I would treat that as a legal/tax question for counsel, not a core assumption of the feature.

[mlissner]

This comes up fairly regularly, but it's a lot of work for not that much reward. What we've done instead is host the Pray and Pay dashboard, which has a subscription you can sign up for. If you do, we'll let you know when the end of quarter approaches, and you can buy the top most needed documents:

https://www.courtlistener.com/help/pray-and-pay/

[dalelotts]

Sorry, I searched for this and did not find anything.

it's a lot of work for not that much reward

Can you elaborate a bit? I don't know what I don't know. =)

[dalelotts]

When you say it's a lot of code to figure out, does that mean you've tried and not succeeded, or you don't have coders to do this?

I am a software engineer so am curious what your obstacles are.

Regarding your second point, what roles are you concerned about recruiting for?

[mlissner]

The second point: Donors. Folks that will sign up to contribute their money/credits.

I think if we wanted to work on something like this, shaking kinks out of the Pray and Pay would be a better use of time than making a new system.

[dalelotts]

How does one find out about the kinks in Pray and Pay?

[mlissner]

Dig around in the issues. There are a few. If you search for Pray, you should find them!

[dalelotts]

The main point I'm trying to convey is that most users, like me, don't have time (or interest) to go through all of the hoops needed to retrieve one of the Pray and Pay documents. (Not to mention that NONE of the "Buy on Pacer" links work for me - e.g. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71554902/34/state-of-oregon-et-al-v-trump-et-al/ links to https://ca9-showdoc.azurewebsites.us/docs/b3c1c6b0-b390-4c9d-b557-fc5d525fd150/b33cddbb-87a4-f011-b41c-001dd803db57 which 404's)

Why not offer a "zero effort" solution? They "donate" any leftover money, each quarter, so that you can fulfill the Prayers. Remove the friction. You could fill all existing open requests with about 200-300 users.

Additionally, once all prayers are answered there would likely be money remaining so the system can fill out documents absent a prayer based on any number of heuristics.

Anyway, point taken. Closing since this is not a priority for FLP.