PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), the online public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from U. S. appellate, district and bankruptcy courts, has a number of search features.
One is “Calendar Events” (under “Reports” > “Civil and Criminal Reports”), which enables date and time delimited searches of specified venues for court conferences, hearings, trials, etc. per numbered categories of legal action (”Nature of Suit”).
For example, a recent U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California PACER search for patent (830) jury trials yielded 9 results in the San Francisco and San Jose chambers for September thru December 2008, permitting a Stanford Law School patent litigation instructor to make arrangements for class field trips to attend some of the trials.
… And don’t forget, if you obtain documents from PACER, to recycle them per Erika Wayne’s May 1 post in this blog:
Erika Wayne
Paul Lomio
Kate Wilko
George Wilson
Sergio Stone
Brian Provenzale
