Enhance financial disclosure DB with search and new scraper for gov't website

[mlissner]

Headline

• "Millions of judicial investments are now searchable on CourtListener"

What is the Feature?

A few things:

1. A new search engine for financial disclosures that lets you query any of the values on the forms. This would be available on the website or via API.

2. A scraper for the new gov't disclosure website.

3. Inclusion of all the data we have that hasn't yet been added to the disclosures DB.

What Problem Might it Solve?

• Folks want to search the investments to see which judges hold them.
• Generally being able to query disclosures should prove valuable.
• This would cement us as the source of these docs, not the terrible gov't website. We had that role at first, but haven't been maintaining it.

Describe a Scenario in Which the Feature Might be Used

Anybody looking for these disclosures would come to us first.

Technical Requirements

• How hard is it to make, subjectively? Hard - New scraper, new search engine, more data.
• Best guess, how long would it take to make, roughly? Two months.
• What would it require that we do technically?
  • Build a new search engine
  • Build a new scraper
  • Ingest data we currently have

Existing Systems or Alternatives?

The only competition is the gov't website.

Additional Information

We've never gotten a dime that I can think of for financial disclosure work, but it is popular. It's always hard to fund for that reason.

[mlissner]

Some notes on the scraper here: https://github.com/freelawproject/courtlistener/issues/3961