Money for Nothing — How Search Charges Devalue PACER

We've talked many times in the past about how difficult PACER is to use and about what you can do to help fix PACER. As we gear up for our new PACER Clearinghouse, we're writing a few more posts about PACER so that people can wrap their minds around just how bad it is. Today, I want to talk briefly about how the PACER search interface contradicts with well-known information retrieval best practices.

Before we can delve into information retrieval best practices, we need to look for a moment at the purpose of PACER, as described by Congress in the e-Government act of 2002.

• The purpose of PACER (e-gov act)
• The reality of searching on pacer
• Imagining a better world