How I break news from legal documents

Legal documents are largely public, but stuck behind arcane systems and paywalls

Hi, folks,

Today I’m going to talk about breaking news from legal documents. This has become a bigger part of the work I do over the past year or so; months before Vox Media laid off the Polygon staff, the company paid for me to receive PACER training from Court Watch’s Seamus Hughes. I’d been using PACER (and breaking news from what I’ve found there) for years prior, but there was a lot I didn’t know. It was actually the Pokémon “Teraleak” that pushed me to seek out training. I knew that Nintendo was going to be going after the person who published the information online, and I wanted to read those documents. (Side note: I did! After months of trawling, Nintendo’s name popped up on a docket for a subpoena to Discord; Nintendo wanted the company to give up information on a user tied to the leaks.)

I think people should have access to publicly available documents — something that’s often hard for people to access given the arcane government systems that document the legal system. That’s my goal with my legal reporting, to provide people access to first-hand access to these documents. Tons of cases get filed daily, and there’s a lot of information to dig through. Not everything you read in a lawsuit is true. But it is news, and I hope my reporting can provide a service to people in that way. It’s also a good place to look for tips — one court document can lead to a bigger story.

The hard part about this sort of reporting is that there’s a direct cost to me. I was reimbursed for money spent on court documents while I was employed at Polygon. Now that I’m not, I pay for these documents myself. PACER court fees are 10 cents per page, capped at $3 per document. It adds up fast, on top of the fee that PACER charges just to search its system, even if no results show up. Some courts use different systems, which can be much pricier. I’ve used systems that cost $20 to search, and $50 to access a single document. Thankfully, when it comes to PACER, the Free Law Project exists to make access more equitable; people accessing court documents through PACER can install a browser extension that automatically uploads documents to a website called Court Listener every time they purchase someone. So, for instance, when I accessed the Nintendo subpoena on PACER, it was automatically uploaded so that anyone can access it for free through Court Listener, because I have the extension installed. Then, whoever comes looking for that document next, if they search Court Listener first, can access it without having to pay. It rules. I pay $10 per month for a membership, which gives me access to a certain number of docket alerts. To give you an estimate for how much I spent, I spent $146 on court documents from PACER over the last quarter. It might not be a significant amount to spend on documents for a larger corporation, but as a freelancer, it’s a real expense.

I spent a lot of time just looking. I search for things, look for new cases, and read old lawsuits. I check dockets for ongoing cases. I have a lot of alerts set up. Oftentimes, this doesn’t lead anywhere. But sometimes it does!

Just this morning, I spent $20 to search for the court documents related to the Krafton and Subnautica 2 case, then $46 more dollars to buy access to a newly unsealed response from Krafton. That’s on top of $20 I spent last week to check the docket for that particular case to see if Krafton had responded; they had, but the document was sealed. That’s why I knew to check in today to see if a public version had been made available.

Let’s talk about how it came together.

Pulling the Subnautica 2 story together

I broke the news of Krafton’s response to the lawsuit filed by the Unknown Worlds executives this morning, shortly before Krafton sent out a press release linking the court documents to journalists. After seeing that Krafton had indeed responded to the complaint last week, I decided to check the docket again today to see if it had been unsealed. It had, so I purchased it right away. That was around 11 a.m. ET. I started writing it up immediately for Aftermath, reaching to Krafton’s public relations team at 12 p.m. ET shortly before publishing the story on Aftermath at 12:18 p.m. ET. Krafton must have sent out its press release to journalists shortly after that, with its own link to documents it had uploaded to Scribd. I got the press release shortly before 1 p.m. ET, about an hour after I’d published the story, but was able to update it with a statement from Krafton.

I like that Krafton did the work of sending out the documents to journalists, especially when its in a court system that’s so costly. Still, I’m glad that I had the foresight to check in on the docket and was able to grab the documents to inform Aftermath’s readers — and everyone else — about the update to the case. (Small thing, but as a freelance journalist, I need these small wins to keep me going!)

Anyway, I write all this because I think the reporting process is really interesting. I wish I could be a fly on the wall for other reporters to see how they pull things together. I think I would learn a lot!

July and August freelancing update

I ended up writing 12 stories in July. Rates ranged from $200 to $1,000. (The average is close to $200.) I did spent a week on “vacation” during this time, but I ended up working from that trip. Not a lot, but, alas.

I’m happy with how the month went, but freelancing is a lot of work. There are a lot of unpaid hours. I’m lucky to be able to be getting this much work at all. But I also feel the constant pressure of knowing that I have a mortgage and bills to pay, and there’s no telling when the freelance work could drop off.

By mid-August, I seem to be on pace to get a similar amount of stories picked up. Right now, I have eight stories in the works or already published. I’ve had five stories published in August so far:

Borderlands defined the looter-shooter genre. Borderlands 4 builds on its legacy for the Epic Games Store’s news section

Cult ‘horse girl’ game Umamusume: Pretty Derby is galloping up the charts for MobileGamer.biz

Krafton responds to Subnautica 2 lawsuit, doubling down on claims that executives ‘abandoned’ developer for Aftermath

Labubu to Lafufu: ‘See you in court’ for Aftermath

I spend a lot of time in my real life trying to find the perfect seat, so why not do it in a game, too for Aftermath

I’ll keep you updated on how the rest of the month goes!