Help with Pray and Pay Project

Since 2009, CourtListener has helped people keep up with new cases and legal topics.

The Pray and Pay Project is a system so you can "Pray" for PACER documents you want, and others can grant those prayers by "Paying" for them on your behalf.

Pray and Pay Project

PACER is the largest paywall on the internet with around a half-million new documents filed weekly.

To advance our mission of open access to the courts, this system allows you to request documents you want on PACER (by "praying" for them), and to fulfill the prayers of others by buying the most-wanted documents in the community.

Listen Up: Every quarter, PACER waives bills of $30 or less. By sending reminder emails near the end of each quarter, we encourage users to use this money to contribute the documents other users need.

Sign Up for Reminders

Since the project's creation, users have fulfilled 22,114 prayers from 2,626 people for 18,751 documents, for a total contribution of $18,383.80!

Fulfilling a Prayer

The most-wanted documents are shown on a leaderboard ranked by how many users have requested a particular document and how many views their corresponding docket has received. After a document is requested, we check PACER to see if it is available for purchase. Unavailable documents are ranked at the bottom of the list; if they later become available, they will be sorted with other open requests. As requests are fulfilled, they are removed from the leaderboard.

Fulfilling somebody's prayer only works if you install the RECAP extension. Once it's installed, all your PACER purchases will be sent to CourtListener automatically — prayers will be granted!

Install RECAP See the Leaderboard

Creating a Prayer

To create a prayer, find a document you are interested in, and press the "Prayer Hands" emoji button on the right (🙏). The number on the button is how many others have requested the document. If you have reached your daily limit, a message will inform you.

When your prayer is granted, we will send you an email so you know.

Here's an example of what an email might look like:

(Click for full size version.)

Sharing Prayers with Others

Via the toggle switch available on their page of requests, users can make their list of pending prayers available to the public. While all requests are anonymously compiled on the leaderboard, journalists and others can share their personal wishlists to help crowdsource documents of interest.

Limitations

Each user can place 5 prayers per day. This prevents people from praying for every item on the site.

Members can place 15 prayers per day.

Many documents are unavailable for purchase on PACER. These include sealed filings, transcripts with delayed release dates, and in some cases, filings related to immigration and social security claims. To avoid having unavailable documents remain on the community leaderboard indefinitely, our servers check whether a document is available for purchase after it has been requested. If it is unavailable, users will be notified via email, and their prayer will be demoted on the leaderboard. Users can request the document again in the future in case it is later available.

Join Free.law

Deleting a Prayer

To delete a prayer, navigate to a docket you have previously requested a document from, and press the 🙏 button on the right again. Alternatively, you can navigate to the list of prayers in your profile and delete from there. It is not possible to delete a prayer once it is fulfilled.

Coming Soon

We do not currently support requests to purchase docket information such as attorneys, parties, or docket text such as minute orders, but we hope to support that in the future.

Please stay tuned!