LinkBuilder

The United States District Courts have done legal professionals everywhere a favor by developing an add-in for MS Word called LinkBuilder. LinkBuilder will automatically insert hyperlinks to court filings available on PACER. See this guide posted to the site of the District of Nebraska. When you open the PDF, you'll see that there is a Word template embedded in the file - 'LinkBuilder.dotm'. The guide shows you how to save this file in the startup folder for Word. It will appear as a new tab on your Word ribbon.

I tested it just now and it seems to worked fine. When you click on 'Insert CM/ECF Links' t searches through a Word document for one of these abbreviations:

Filing no. 1

Filing 1

Docket no. 1

Doc. #1

Doc. 1

ECF No. 1

ECF 1

. . . and will then automatically link the PACER filing to the reference. It’s doesn’t work for ex parte filings, filings under seal, or minute entries.

The add-in prompts you to select a district court, and choose one of the seven citation formats. Note that not all district courts have the LinkBuilder report option installed. If they do, you want to use it and select the option to 'paste data from from CM/ECF report' since you won't incur any charges on your PACER account with this method.

You are directed to login to PACER, click on Reports in the 'title bar' menu, and then click on Link Builder.

[Oddlly even though this guide is posted to the site of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska, that court does not seem to have the LinkBuilder option. The District of Utah does however. After searching by a case number you should find code like this: [I am somewhat suspicious that such code is not available for all cases - even those filed since LinkBuilder was introduced (2013?).

Copy and paste the code as prompted by the add-in.

If the District Court does not have the LinkBuilder report option, you can choose the last option to pull data from the Docket Sheet, but you will be charged. I have tested out this last option and it works just fine for the Southern District of New York.