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PACER

Navigating Federal Court Records

The Information is There, You Just Need to Know How to Look

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is one of the main conduits for accessing federal court records. Unfortunately, it is a labyrinth to navigate. With over 319 million individual case files, a single PACER search could either yield no results or thousands. Through years of experience with the system, we have developed a proven method to traverse the online system and identify new cases before they have become national and international news. The results have been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Reuters, National Public Radio, NBCNews, ABCNews, CBSNews, CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC. Additionally, Hughes Consulting’s director, Seamus Hughes was part of a New York Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting on law enforcement in America. We would welcome an opportunity to share our expertise.

Seamus Hughes is credited for discovering some of the most high profile indictments of our time that could have very easily been overlooked
— CBS News
...A researcher and a renowned expert at scouring unsealed court filings for overlooked news
— Politico
Hughes is a master of PACER
— Washington Post
A well-known PACER Watcher
— Department of Justice
The warrant, which marks the first time a suspect has been publicly named, was first obtained by Seamus Hughes...who mines federal court databases.
— Associated Press
The existence of the indictment became known only after [...] Seamus Hughes who closely tracks court cases, discovered the document.
— New York Times
Seamus is a super sleuth. He’s teaching journalists how to do their job better.
— Brian Ross, Former ABCNews Chief Investigative Journalist
An expert on national security court cases.
— ABC News
[Hughes] is known for digging through court filings for revealing details
— NPR
Search Savant: This guy keeps finding news in obscure court documents.
— Washingtonian Magazine
Their research and investigative work has repeatedly broken news that the press would have otherwise missed
— Columbia Journalism Review
Hughes is the Jedi Master of PACER
— Ron Nixon, International Investigations Editor, Associated Press