On 23 February 2001, the Federal Court launched the pilot of eCourt, the first Court in Australia to introduce this initiative.

eCourt is a virtual courtroom that assists in the management of pre-trial matters and allows for directions and other orders to be made online. Through eCourt, the court may receive submissions and affidavit evidence and make orders as if the parties were in a normal courtroom.

This initiative is an example of the Federal Court’s commitment to ensuring that the Court system remains relevant and responsive to the needs of the community in the 21st century.

One of the main objectives of the eCourt initiative as elicited from the eCourt strategy is to take advantage of the technological advances available to benefit the Court and its users.

An overview of eCourt strategy is explained on the Federal Court of Australia website:

“The eCourt strategy has several objectives, one of which is that the Court should take advantage of technological opportunities to achieve benefits for both the Court and its users.

The eCourt strategy:

• complements traditional means of transacting with the Court;
• develops innovative approaches to meeting the needs of Court users and extends the choices available to those wanting access to services and appropriate information;
• improves and enhances access to justice, and reduces inconvenience and the cost of justice to parties, particularly those in outlying regional and country areas;
• focuses on the needs of the broad community independent of geographic or socioeconomic circumstances);
• assists judges, regardless of location, to carry out their duties as efficiently and effectively as possible;
• enables the Court’s administration to support the judicial function and delivery of services to eCourt users, efficiently and with minimum disruption to the user; and
• makes better use of tried and tested technologies, such as telephone services and video-conferencing.”

The eCourt strategy is technically and administratively flexible in order to accommodate future changes to the Court’s business. In line with world wide trends, the eCourt strategy makes use of the Internet to facilitate seamless and easy access to internal and external databases.

The management structure overseeing the implementation of the eCourt initiatives is committed to ensuring that the strategy’s progress is reviewed on an ongoing basis and will re-evaluate priorities and initiatives, if required, against emerging best practice

The Court tried the case of De Rose v State of South Australia [2002] FCA 1342, a native title hearing that was held in an electronic bush courtroom, which was based in Marla, 400 kms south of Alice Springs. A make-shift courtroom was assembled and disassembled on site each day for hearings.

What is PACER? Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet. Links to all courts are provided from this web site. Electronic access is available by registering with the PACER Service Center, the judiciary’s centralized registration, billing, and technical support center.

Each court maintains its own databases with case information. Because PACER database systems are maintained within each court, each jurisdiction will have a different URL. Accessing and querying information from each service is comparable; however, the format and content of information provided may differ slightly.

PACER is a service of United States Judiciary. The PACER Service Center is run by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Why use PACER? The PACER System offers an inexpensive, fast, and comprehensive case information service to any individual with a personal computer PC and Internet access. ThePACER system permits you to request information about a particular individual or case. The data is displayed directly on your PC screen within a few seconds. The system is simple enough that little user training or documentation is required.

Available Information The PACER System offers electronic access to case dockets to retrieve information such as:

- 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 
- A listing of new cases each day 
- Appellate court opinions 
- Judgments or case status 
- Types of documents filed for certain cases 
- Many courts offer imaged copies of documents  

U.S. Party/Case Index

The U.S. Party/Case Index is a national index for U.S. district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts. A small subset of information from each case will be transferred to the U.S. Party/Case Index each night. The system serves as a locator index for PACER. You may conduct nationwide searches to determine whether or not a party is involved in federal litigation. For detailed information on cases found while searching the U.S. Party/Case Index, you will need to visit the PACER site for the particular jurisdiction where the case is located.

The PACER System is available days, nights, and weekends. You can verify all updates to active and recently closed cases without having to make repeated trips to the court to review paper records. If there have been no updates, this can be confirmed in seconds.

- A personal computer - Internet Access - Javascript enabled web browser

The United States Congress has given the Judicial Conference of the United States, the judicial governing body of the U.S. Federal Courts, authority to impose user fees for electronic access to case information. For a history of the electronic public access fee and a current electronic public access fee schedule, click here. All registered agences or individuals will be charged a user fee. Access to web based PACER systems will generate a $.08 per page charge. The per page charge applies to the number of pages that results from any search, including a search that yields no matches one page for no matchesThe charge applies whether or not pages are printed, viewed, or downloaded. You will be billed on a quarterly basis for your transactions. You will be allowed to enter a client code of your choosing each time you login to PACER to help facilitate managing the costs.

A measure was approved by the Judicial Conference of the United States in March 2001 stating that no fee is owed until a user accrues more than $10 worth of charges in a calendar year. Consequently, if an account does not accrue $10 worth of usage between January 1st and December 31st each year, all balances will be deleted from our records. This policy change will be effective for the calendar year of 2001, and statements will not be mailed to PACER users whose accounts do not have a balance due of at least $10. Once the balance due exceeds $10, a user will receive a statement by mail which includes the current and previous charges in a calendar year. Please read the announcement detailing this change.

The Judicial Conference, at its September 2003 session, amended the language of Section I of the Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule for the appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts, the United States Court of Federal Claims, and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation adopted by the Judicial Conference pursuant to sections 1913, 1914, 1926, 1930, and 1932 of title 28, United States Code. The previous schedule placed a cap on the eight cents per page charge for Internet access to data obtained electronically from the public records of individual cases in the courts, with a maximum $2.40, the equivalent of 30 pages, for electronic access to any single document. The amendment extends this cap to all case documents, including docket sheets and case-specific reports. The cap does not apply to name searches, reports that are not case-specific and transcripts of federal court proceedings. The cap will apply to allPACER, RACER, or CM/ECF sites .

For example: previously, a 50 page document cost $4.00 at 8 cents a page. This same document now only costs $2.40. Users will receive the entire 50 page document but only be charged $2.40. Each attachment in CM/ECF sites is considered a separate document. Therefore, the cap will apply to each attachment over 30 pages separately.