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Sunday, November 27, 2005

Courts - Electronic case filing at the federal level marks 10 year anniversary

My November 2005 Res Gestae article, "Indiana appellate court records – how accessible?", after describing the current microfilming system used by the appellate courts, and the use of the internet for posting current opinions, has a section on the future:

What is next? The federal courts have gone to electronic filing of documents. This means that the party’s documents are already in digital form when the federal courts receive them. Transcripts are created digitally. The courts’ orders and opinions are also. The records in a case may be accessed online through the federal PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) system. A “Chronology of the Federal Judiciary’s Electronic Public Access (EPA) Program” is available online.

The Indiana Supreme Court has adopted a new access rule for court records, Administrative Rule 9, which went into operation January 1, 2005. Among other things, the rule clarified what personal information is to be excluded from electronic records.

The next step, if the State is to follow the course of the federal courts, would be the proposal by the Court of rules for electronic filing, and the institution of a training and phase-in program. No such rule changes are pending currently.

I thought of that when I read this posting last week on the U.S. Courts website, celebrating 10 years of electronic filing on the federal level. There is no electronic fililng at the Indiana appellate level, hence the need for all the microfilming and photocopying, the unavailability of the parties' briefs online, etc. And at the trial level, the Indiana Supreme Court Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC) came to a standstill a few months back, after four years of work, and essentially announced it was planning to begin anew. For more, see this 10/26/05 ILB entry and related links.

Here are some quotes from the federal courts' announcement:

The world's most comprehensive court electronic case filing system turns 10 years old this month, after processing more than 24 million federal court cases and serving hundreds of thousands of attorneys and litigants.

The federal courts' Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system allows most U.S. district and bankruptcy courts to accept case filings over the Internet, and gives the public instant access to docket sheets and filed case documents.

There are no added fees for filing court documents over the Internet. For a modest fee, electronic access to the documents is available through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) program. Litigants receive one free copy of documents filed electronically in their case, which they can save or print. Others may view or download documents for eight cents a page, with a maximum cost per document of $2.40.

Currently, 85 district courts, 91 bankruptcy courts, the Court of International Trade, and the Court of Federal Claims use the CM/ECF system. Implementation takes about 10 months in each court. It is expected the system will be operating fully in virtually all courts, including the U.S. courts of appeals, by late 2006. * * *

"This is a win-win undertaking" said Leonidas Ralph Mecham, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which partnered with federal courts to develop the system. "It provides lawyers, the media, and any interested party with access to important case documents from anywhere at anytime. It also is a cost-efficient and effective way for the courts to approach what previously had been a labor- and paper-intensive responsibility." * * *

"There are not many projects that warrant such praise," Mecham said, "but CM/ECF has forever changed the way federal courts conduct business and the way the public accesses court records. It will go down in history as one of the most significant milestones in federal court operations."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 27, 2005 07:30 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts