Organized Money The Monopolists Who Gatekeep the Court System
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Jan 28, 2026 Mike Lissner, co-founder and CTO of the Free Law Project, builds open tools to publish court documents and legal texts. He unpacks how a duopoly turned public records into costly paywalled commodities. They explore PACER fees, citation control, crowdsourced fixes like RECAP, scanning reporter books, neutral citations, and why open legal data matters for access, security, and innovation.
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Public Law Locked Behind Paywalls
- Public court documents are effectively behind paywalls although they should be free public assets.
- This gatekeeping raises legal costs and places justice out of reach for many people.
How Free Law Project Began
- Mike Lissner describes his path from creative-commons and Linux interests into legal-data work around 2009.
- He and co-founders started Free Law Project to open legal data and have worked on it for years.
Case Law Makes Statutes Usable
- Case law and court filings implement and interpret statutes, so access to cases is essential to know how laws apply.
- Statutes alone often leave critical questions unresolved without precedent.