PACER Usage (Delaware State University)

Jonathan Rudenberg filed this request with the Delaware State University of Delaware.
Status
Completed

Communications

From: Jonathan Rudenberg

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to Delaware's Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

I am trying to determine how much money (if any) Delaware State University is spending on access to federal court documents and other primary legal materials. Specifically, I am requesting copies of:

- Any memoranda or budgetary documents that detail the total amount actually spent or the amount budgeted to be spent by the Delaware State University to access the PACER system run by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. I am interested in how much was spent or was budgeted to be spent in the period from 2000 to the present, as well as budget items for future fiscal periods.

- Any agreements, contracts, or memoranda of understanding between the Delaware State University and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts governing access to the PACER system by Delaware State University staff and students.

- Any memoranda or other documents from Delaware State University management to staff or students asking them to curtail, limit, or otherwise ration their use of the PACER system due to cost considerations.

- Any contracts, memoranda, or budgetary materials detailing the specific agreements and amount of money spent by the Delaware State University with commercial legal information providers such as Thomson WestLaw or the ReedElsiveir LexisNexis service. While I understand such commercial legal information providers have more than just federal data, documents pertaining to the amount spent or budgeted, contracts, and memoranda relating to curtailing use because of cost are all relevant to this inquiry.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, and is not being made for commercial usage.

In the event that fees cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 15 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Rudenberg

From: MuckRock.com

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 6, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

From: MuckRock.com

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 6, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

From: David K. Sheppard

Mr. Rudenberg,

Your FOIA request was transmitted to me for a response. Having reviewed your four (sets of) questions, I can provide you with the following responses seriatim:

1. Delaware State University ("DSU") has no memoranda or budgetary documents that detail the total amount spent or budgeted to be spent by DSU to access PACER. To the extent that DSU accessed any federal court documents, it was done through Westlaw, which does not break out, on a line item basis, the cost to access certain federal courts records (e.g., court dockets) as compared to federal court decisions.

2. There are no agreements, contracts or memoranda of understanding between DSU and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts governing access to the PACER system.

3. There are no memoranda or other documents from DSU management to staff or students asking them to curtail, limit or otherwise ration their use of the PACER system due to cost considerations or for any other reason.

4. We had an agreement for the provision of limited legal information through Westlaw until February 28, 2015, when that agreement expired. The scope of the services provided included all primary law in Delaware (cases, regulations, and statutes), federal cases within the Third Circuit, including the USCA, and Education Law Cases and treatises. The cost of this subscription was $157.50 monthly or $1,890 annually. Since the expiration of our agreement with Westlaw in February, it has not been renewed. We are currently exploring our options in this regard.

I trust that the forgoing sufficiently answers the questions that you posed in your email of April 27, 2015.
Regards,

David K. Sheppard
Assistant General Counsel
Delaware State University
1200 N. DuPont Highway
Dover, DE 19901
(302) 857-7827

Files

There are no files associated with this request.