Recently, we started a new project to analyze a few million PACER documents that we acquired through the RECAP Project. As we began working with the data, one thing we did was count how many pages every document had so that we could calculate the average length of a PDF in PACER. Fairly quickly we learned that based on our sample, the average length of a PACER document is 9.1 pages.1
Based on a sample of about 2M PDFs, the average length of a PACER document is 9.1 pages. The max (so far) is 4,417.— RECAP the Law (@RECAPtheLaw) September 2, 2016
This is a really interesting statistic. Another is that there are more than one billion documents in in PACER:
CM/ECF currently contains, in aggregate, more than one billion retrievable documents spread among the 13 courts of appeals, 94 district courts, 90 bankruptcy courts, and other specialized tribunals.
2014 Supreme Court Annual
Original URL: https://free.law/2016/10/10/the-cost-of-pacer-data-around-one-billion-dollars/