Batch Download PACER Filings

PacerPro is becoming widely known as a site (https://www.pacerpro.com/) which adds enhanced features for the federal court system's PACER site. Dowloading multiple filings from the docket of a federal district court can be a very time consuming process. While sometimes there's option to download several documents for a single filing as a zip file, PACER forces the user to browse to a separate web page before a filing can be viewed. You can't simply check off multiple entries on the docket for downloading. Lexis Courtlink does provide this option, but you have to wait for the PDF images to be emailed, and I've experienced problems with larger files arriving.

The batch download option in PacerPro lets you get around this problem. You do have to click on each filing separately to have it selected in Entries Detailed window on the right. When there are multiple documents for each filing it will take some time for them to load up. You'll see the option to 'Select All' and 'Download Selected', but if you're trying to get any number of documents at all you should find that PacerPro gives you an error message about not being able to save everything to a zip file. Get around this limitation by working in the Firefox browser with the DownThemAll add-on, or the Download Master app for Chrome. Just right click in the Entries Detailed window and select the FireFox add-on, or choose the Chrome app from the toolbar. You can filter for PDFs and save all the filings you need to a folder on your PC.