CM/ECF and PACER in the Eastern District of Louisiana
Federal court filings are handled electronically. In the Eastern District of Louisiana, as throughout the federal system, documents are submitted through CM/ECF and the resulting record is accessed through PACER. Understanding how the two systems relate — and what they do and do not reveal in a criminal case — matters for anyone following a federal prosecution.
What CM/ECF Is
CM/ECF stands for Case Management/Electronic Case Files. It is the federal judiciary’s system for docketing cases and accepting electronic filings. When a document is submitted through CM/ECF it is entered on the docket, assigned a docket number, timestamped, and distributed automatically to counsel of record.
In the court’s electronic systems this district is identified as LAED rather than EDLA. Case numbers, system addresses, and generated notices all use that form.
CM/ECF and PACER Are Not the Same System
The two are routinely conflated, but they serve different functions and different users.
- CM/ECF is the filing system. Access requires credentials issued to attorneys admitted to practice before the court. It is how documents go in.
- PACER — Public Access to Court Electronic Records — is the public retrieval system. Any member of the public may register. It is how documents come out.
PACER charges a per-page fee for retrieving documents, subject to a cap on any single document and a periodic waiver threshold for low-volume users. Registration is available through pacer.uscourts.gov, which covers all federal courts rather than a single district.
Who Files Electronically
Attorneys admitted to practice before the district file through CM/ECF and are responsible for maintaining their own credentials. A filing made under an attorney’s login carries that attorney’s signature, which is why credential sharing is prohibited.
Parties appearing without counsel are generally not registered CM/ECF filers and submit documents through the clerk’s office instead, subject to the court’s procedures for pro se litigants. Requirements vary and are set by the court rather than by any individual judge.
Notices of Electronic Filing
Each accepted filing generates a Notice of Electronic Filing, distributed to all counsel of record on the case. The NEF records the filing date and time and functions as service on registered participants, replacing conventional service for most documents.
Deadline calculations run from what the NEF records. Where a submission is made close to a deadline, the timestamp on the notice — not the moment the attorney pressed submit — is the operative fact.
Sealed and Restricted Filings in Criminal Cases
This is where a criminal docket diverges most sharply from a civil one. Substantial categories of criminal filing are not publicly visible:
- Indictments returned under seal, which remain sealed until arrest or until the court orders otherwise
- Grand jury material, protected from disclosure under Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure
- Plea supplements and cooperation-related filings, commonly sealed as a matter of course
- Presentence investigation reports, which are not public documents
- Filings containing sensitive personal identifiers or information about third parties
Reading a Criminal Docket
A federal criminal docket sheet lists entries chronologically with a docket number, a filing date, and a description. Following the case usually means tracking the sequence of principal events: the charging instrument, the initial appearance, any detention proceedings, the arraignment, the scheduling order, pretrial motions and their disposition, and finally the judgment. Our guide to how a federal criminal case proceeds in this district sets out that sequence in full.
Docket text is written for the court’s administrative purposes, not for outside readers. Entries are terse and heavily abbreviated, and a short entry can correspond to a substantively significant event.
Limitations Worth Knowing
PACER indexes documents by case, not by subject matter, and its search facilities are limited. Older cases predating electronic filing may exist only in paper form at the clerk’s office or in archived storage. And the absence of a document from the public docket establishes only that it is not publicly available — not that it does not exist.