The opinions are free. The rest of the filings, which you need if you want information about a case which has not yet been decided, or if you want a fuller pic

The opinions are free. The rest of the filings, which you need if you want information about a case which has not yet been decided, or if you want a fuller picture of what's going on in any case, are not. Personally, I have no idea whether it's possible to do meaningful data analysis on PACER data, so I'm not necessarily arguing against your original point. But as a non-lawyer who sometimes gets interested in particular court cases, I find PACER fees obnoxious. Partly because the fees force me to think about whether I actually need a particular piece of information, which is so alien to the normal way I browse anything on the Web. And partly because the fees are the reason I have to actually deal with PACER's 90's-style interface: if all PACER data were free, I'm sure there would be at least one free website mirroring that data with a nicer interface.