General Overview
The United States District Court Southern District of Florida serves over four million people. Access to the court records is through PACER (and subsequently, CaseStream, CourtExpress, & CourtLink). PACER access is available through both direct dial and through the Internet. However, billing is handled through PACER (and subsequently, CaseStream, CourtExpress, & CourtLink).

Court Record System Overview
Since the court records are available through PACER, available information includes: a listing of all parties and participants including judges, attorneys, and trustees; a compilation of case-related information such as cause of action, nature of suit, and dollar demand; a chronology of dates of case events entered in the case record; a claims registry; judgments or case status; and types of documents filed for certain cases.
 

Court Case Filings	1998 Reported Filings
Civil	6,184
Criminal	1,488

Electronic Public Access Methods
Access to the court records is available through PACER, either by direct dial or through the Internet. Electronic access is available by registering with the PACER Service Center, the judiciary’s centralized registration, billing and technical support center. (PACER contact information is included earlier in this report.)

Available Information
The public has access to all Federal District “active” cases. The number of available records changes daily, due to the courts caseloads. To access the PACER system through direct dial, users need a terminal emulation program (such as ProComm Plus or hyper-terminal); to access the PACER system through the Internet, users need an Internet web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator. 

Subscribers & Fees
Access to the public records is available through PACER. PACER charges are $.60 a minute for dial-up service and an access fee of $.07 per page for access to PACER service on the Internet. Since the court records are available through PACER, CaseStream, CourtExpress, and CourtLink all provide access through their systems, and are billed directly by those services. 

Development & Maintenance Costs
Since the Federal District court information is available through PACER, there was no charge to the court for development. Maintenance of the PACER system is handled by the PACER support. CaseStream, CourtExpress and CourtLink support their access respectively.

Court & EPA Staffing Information
There are approximately 350 employees at the United States District Court Southern District of Florida. This includes twelve technical staff in the information systems department. PACER support handles all questions dealing with public record access. CaseStream, CourtExpress, and CourtLink handle support for users requesting assistance through the respective service providers.