Cyber Beat

Pilot Project: Filing Pleadings With The Court Via The Internet

In an earlier article I had indicated that the federal courts in the United States would not be implementing electronic filing, and filing through the internet, for many years to come. This statement still holds true, however, to prepare the federal court system for the inevitable a few pilot projects have been initiated to test the waters. The United States District Court for the District of New Mexico has volunteered to be a pilot court for the federal system to test these waters.

In August, 1996, the Advanced Court Engineering (ACE) project began testing electronic filing in New Mexico. In October, 1996, the court, with the assistance of attorneys who practice in that court, began testing filing electronically through the internet. Presently, however, electronic filing with that court, and access to those records, is only available to the attorneys who have cases pending that have been filed electronically. This will change as the pilot project moves forward and testing of the process leaves the court with little concern about security of its system.

The process for electronic filing is basically simple. The attorneys prepare their documents on their computer and forward the documents via an Internet browser to the court. With a password account, the attorney submits the prepared electronic file to the court.

The efforts to move forward with electronic filing coincide with desire for the courts nationwide to become paperless courts. As you can imagine, the paper documents that flood the court system daily create mountains of work for the court staff. Each paper document that is filed with the court must be handled by a minimum of three court employees. The paper documents are received at the public counters in each court, as well as through the United States mail. They are reviewed for conformity to the Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure, as well as the Local Rules of the receiving court. Once accepted, the documents are stamped filed and forwarded to the Docketing Section of the Clerk's Office. The docketing staff enters information about the document onto an electronic docket, records a docket entry number on the document, and routes the document to the Records Section. The Records Section is responsible for sorting documents by case number and placing the documents into the original case file consecutively by docket entry number.

Processing documents filed by the attorneys is completed by court clerical staff who often must review the document in an effort to determine the purpose of the document. Because the staff must summarily review the documents before processing, the workload can become backlogged. Delays in the process are quite "normal" as some documents can be more difficult to interpret than others. Unless you have been an employee in a court you probably couldn't appreciate the "creative" ways documents are prepared or written by counsel or individuals acting as their own counsel. What seems a simple process often results in court personnel expending an inordinate amount of time handling one particular pleading.

Thus, electronic filing, and elimination of paper documents, would completely eliminate the inordinate amount of time spent by court staff handling the documents. The obvious question, then, is what will court staff do if electronic filing is implemented across the country? To some degree, the courts will undoubtedly lose some staff as a result of electronic filing. The staff that remain will most likely be responsible for reviewing electronically filed documents to ensure that the documents have been accepted by the computer system. The staff will most likely take on additional roles as "information managers." In other words, with the elimination of the need to process paper, the staff, in theory, would have more time available to answer questions of the public. However, this whole issue will certainly be a topic of heated discussion amongst court officials.

Electronic filing, however, will not completely eliminate the requirement to file original, hard copies of documents with the court. Courts not only rely on precedent in case law to assist them in making decisions on particular cases, but rely on "precedent" in the processing of their work load as well. What has worked in the past shouldn't be changed is a mind set that is entrenched in the system. However, as the Internet and other electronic systems are enhanced, and as improvements are made to ensure the security of computer systems, I am hopeful that the system will disengage its stranglehold around the outdated method of doing its business.

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