Now that the Stanford ​researchers have documented the scope of the issue, the ​team is proposing policy solutions. To start, Engstrom said ⁠the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession she co-directs at Stanford is hiring a staff lawyer whose job will include filing challenges to sealing requests on behalf of the public interest. Courts should incentivize more third parties to challenge sealing, the study proposes, by offering attorneys’ fees for successful interventions akin to third-party objectors in ​class-action settlements. Some nonprofits, including Public Justice, already challenge sealing requests.

Engstrom’s team is drafting letters to the chief justices of every federal appellate district, detailing instances they ​found where local court rules ⁠around sealing diverge from the case law in that district. “Most of the time when district courts cite a sealing standard, they cite the wrong standard,” Engstrom told me.