A public record civil court action is one you can usually look up yourself, either online or at the courthouse. Federal civil cases are searchable through PACER at $0.10 per page, and state and county courts run their own portals with their own fees and access rules. What you can actually see depends on the court, the age of the case, and whether a judge has restricted any part of the file.
What You Can Expect to Find in a Civil Case File
A civil case file is built document by document as the case moves forward. The complaint opens it, laying out what the plaintiff claims and what relief they want. The defendant’s answer responds and may add counterclaims. From there the file grows: motions from either side, court orders, hearing transcripts, and eventually a judgment or settlement record.
Discovery materials, like written questions between the parties and deposition transcripts, sometimes appear in the public file but often don’t. Documents produced during discovery generally stay out of the public record unless a party files them with the court or a judge orders their disclosure.
Searching Federal Civil Cases Through PACER
PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) covers federal district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts nationwide and holds over one billion documents.1Federal Judiciary. Public Access to Court Electronic Records | PACER It’s the fastest way to find a federal civil filing.
Register for a free account at pacer.gov. Providing a credit card during registration activates the account immediately; skip that and you’ll get an activation code by mail in seven to ten business days. Once you’re in, you can search a single court’s database or use the PACER Case Locator, a nationwide index that runs a party-name search across every federal court at once.2Federal Judiciary. PACER Case Locator
Documents and docket reports cost $0.10 per page, capped at $3.00 per document (30 pages). Audio files of hearings are $2.40 each. If your account racks up $30 or less in charges during a quarter, the fees are waived entirely, and the judiciary reports about 75 percent of users pay nothing in a given quarter.3United States Courts. Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule
Free Ways to Pull Federal Records
Judicial opinions on PACER are free regardless of your balance. Public access terminals inside any federal courthouse let you view electronic case records at no charge, though printing is $0.10 per page.4United States Courts. Find a Case (PACER)
RECAP, a browser extension from the Free Law Project, is the other workaround worth installing. When a PACER user with the extension pays for a document, a copy goes into a free public archive. If someone has already bought what you need, RECAP serves it to you inside the PACER interface at no cost. The archive is also searchable at CourtListener.com. It won’t help with obscure filings nobody has pulled before, but for any case with public interest it saves real money.
Searching State and County Civil Records
State courts have no single national portal. Each state, and sometimes each county, runs its own system. Many offer free or low-cost online case search by party name, case number, or filing date. Depth varies: some systems show full dockets and downloadable PDFs, others display only basic case information and send you to the courthouse for the actual papers.
Fees run the same range as the technology. Some state portals are completely free for basic lookups; others charge per search or per document. Name-based record searches at the state or county level commonly run between a few dollars and $15. If you don’t know which court handled the case, start with the clerk’s office in the county where the defendant lives or where the dispute arose, because that’s where most civil cases are filed.
Visiting the Courthouse
For courts without strong online systems, or when you need to review a thick file, the clerk’s office is sometimes the only option. Bring the case number, party names, and the approximate filing year. The clerk pulls the official file and lets you review it on-site.
Expect some friction. Older cases may be stored offsite and require advance notice before they can be retrieved. Staff shortages mean longer waits in some places. Viewing is generally free; copies are not, and the per-page rate is set by the court.
Getting Copies: Regular, Certified, and Exemplified
A plain photocopy is fine for personal reference. Some situations require more.
A certified copy carries the clerk’s stamp and signature attesting that it’s a true copy of the official record. Courts typically charge somewhere between a few dollars and $40, depending on jurisdiction and page count.
An exemplified copy goes further: the clerk certifies the document, then a judge authenticates the clerk’s signature, and the court’s seal is stamped through all pages. You’d need this to file a court document in another state or country, where the receiving court needs extra assurance that the record is genuine.5eService Center & Washington Courts FAQs. Getting an Exemplified Copy from the Court
PACER downloads give you the most current version of any federal filing but are not certified. For certified copies of federal records, contact the clerk of the specific court.
What You Won’t Be Able to See
Not everything in a civil file is accessible. A few categories are routinely withheld, and knowing them up front saves wasted effort.
- Sealed records. A judge can seal part or all of a file when disclosure would cause harm that outweighs the public’s interest in access. The party seeking to seal has to show specific legal and factual reasons. Trade secrets, proprietary business information, and sensitive personal matters are common grounds. Once sealed, those records are effectively invisible to the public.
- Material covered by protective orders. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c), courts can issue protective orders shielding confidential business information exchanged during discovery. A “confidential” designation doesn’t automatically mean the document is sealed from the public record, but it limits who sees it and how it’s used.
- Medical information. HIPAA governs how healthcare providers disclose medical information in response to court orders and subpoenas, generally limiting disclosure to only the information specifically described in the order.6HHS.gov. Court Orders and Subpoenas
- Adoption and mental health proceedings. Many jurisdictions treat these as categorically confidential. The records are typically not available to the public without a specific court order.
Even in documents that are public, certain personal identifiers are redacted before filing. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2 limits Social Security and taxpayer ID numbers to the last four digits, birth dates to the year, minors’ names to initials, and financial account numbers to the last four digits.7Cornell University. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 5.2 – Privacy Protection For Filings Made with the Court Most state courts have adopted similar rules. So even a fully public file will show partial numbers rather than complete ones.
Older Cases May Not Be Where You Think
Court records don’t stay in the courthouse forever. Federal courts follow a retention schedule that moves civil files to the National Archives or destroys them on set timelines.
Cases considered historically significant, including class actions, multi-district litigation, and cases with certain designated subject-matter codes, are kept permanently. Paper records from those cases transfer to the National Archives 15 years after the case closes; electronic records transfer after 30 years.8U.S. Courts. Records Disposition Schedule 2 Routine civil files that don’t meet those criteria are destroyed 15 years after the case closes.
If you need something old, the courthouse may no longer have it on-site. The file could be at a Federal Records Center, already with the National Archives, or gone. State retention policies vary just as widely. Some states keep civil records indefinitely; others destroy them on a schedule. Call the clerk’s office before making a trip for anything more than a few years old.
Tips That Save Time and Money
The biggest time-saver is having the case number. Without it, a party-name search works, but common names return enormous result lists. Narrow by date range, court location, or case type. For federal cases, the PACER Case Locator lets you check the nationwide index before drilling into a specific court’s docket.2Federal Judiciary. PACER Case Locator
Civil cases can land in more than one court. A contract dispute might go to federal court if the parties are from different states, or to state court where the contract was performed. If you’re not finding what you expect, search both systems. Also check whether the case was removed from state to federal court partway through, which splits the record between the two.
For regular research rather than a one-time lookup, the quarterly fee waiver on PACER is worth planning around. Spread searches across billing quarters where possible, and install RECAP so you don’t pay for documents someone else already downloaded. At the state level, ask whether the court offers a subscription or bulk-access option if you’ll be pulling records often.