If you’ve ever struggled to keep your PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) fees under control, you’re not alone. For firms with multiple users accessing federal court records, these costs can add up quickly. The good news is that managing these fees just got a whole lot easier with the introduction of the new PACER Fee Alert Management Dashboard.

This dashboard is designed to help account administrators take control of PACER fee alerts more efficiently and reduce unnecessary costs. Let’s take a closer look at how this tool can help you manage your firm’s PACER fees.

What is the PACER Fee Alert Management Dashboard?

PACER alerts are a convenient way to stay updated on case developments, new docket entries, and document filings. However, these alerts often lead to automatic charges each time you access a document. Without careful monitoring, this can balloon into a significant expense for a firm, especially if you have multiple attorneys and staff accessing the system.

The new dashboard allows administrators to see a comprehensive view of all PACER alerts across their firm in one place, making it easier to identify high-cost alerts, manage them efficiently, and implement strategies to lower the firm's overall PACER bill. 

What is the PACER Fee Alert Management Dashboard?

PACER alerts are a convenient way to stay updated on case developments, new docket entries, and document filings. However, these alerts often lead to automatic charges each time you access a document. Without careful monitoring, this can balloon into a significant expense for a firm, especially if you have multiple attorneys and staff accessing the system.

The new dashboard allows administrators to see a comprehensive view of all PACER alerts across their firm in one place, making it easier to identify high-cost alerts, manage them efficiently, and implement strategies to lower the firm's overall PACER bill.

Key Features of the Dashboard

1. Firm-Wide Alert Overview: The most powerful feature of the new dashboard is that it gives account administrators a full picture of all alerts set up by the firm. Instead of reviewing alerts one-by-one or having to coordinate with individual users, administrators can see everything at a glance. This centralized view makes it easy to see which alerts are costing the most, where adjustments need to be made, and which alerts may be unnecessary.

2. Edit Alerts Directly from the Dashboard: The new dashboard lets you edit alerts directly from the interface. Whether you want to change the frequency of an alert, add or remove specific cases, or modify document inclusion settings, it’s all easily accessible. This allows for rapid adjustments, especially when you notice alerts that are leading to excessive PACER charges.

3. Sort & Filter for High-Impact Alerts With a large number of alerts active across a firm, it’s important to focus on the ones that have the greatest financial impact. The dashboard includes robust filtering and sorting features that let you quickly identify alerts costing the most in PACER fees. Once you know which alerts are creating the bulk of the expense, you can strategize to reduce costs, whether by lowering alert frequency or removing alerts tied to cases that are less critical.

4. Detailed Alert Fields to Lower PACER Bills To help users reduce their PACER costs, the dashboard includes fields that provide actionable insights:

• Document-Inclusive Alerts: Alerts that include attached documents tend to incur higher costs since each document access is charged separately. The dashboard makes it easy to identify these alerts so that administrators can evaluate whether they are necessary or whether they should be adjusted to receive only docket updates without documents.

• Case Status and Recent Activity: The dashboard shows which alerts are linked to cases that may be closed or have no recent docket activity. Such cases often don’t need constant monitoring, so it’s a great opportunity to either disable those alerts or lower their frequency, minimizing unnecessary charges.

• Customizable Frequency: Some alerts may be set to notify users of changes too frequently. For cases that are not moving rapidly, lowering the alert frequency can help reduce both unnecessary alerts and the associated PACER fees.