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Friday, January 15, 2010
Ind. Courts - Returning to: Appellate Clerk's Office now authorized to serve orders, notices and opinions via e-mail
In this entry on Wednesday, Jan. 13th, the ILB related practitioners' problems with the Appellate Court Clerk's Office's current implementation of the revision to Appellate Rule 26, requiring the Clerk to transmit orders, opinions, and notices by e-mail to all parties represented by attorneys.
I would like to clarify that nothing in that post was intended as criticism of the operation of the Indiana Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals has no say over the operations of the Clerk's Office. The COA is simply a customer, much like the practitioner, although the COA handles over 90% of the State's appellate business.
This matter of who to look to for corrections and improvements has come up in the past, re issues relating to the timely posting of opinions, the sudden and complete disappearance of certain cases from the Clerk's docket, and the timely transmission of fully-briefed cases to the COA itself (see, eg this ILB entry from 4/1/09).
The COA also has had no input into the building and maintaining of the Clerk's docket, or into the hiring of the Director of Appellate Court Technology and has no role in his job description or performance.
Finally, with regard to a reader's comment that with respect to the Rule 26 "electronic" notices, "each e-mail message and confirmation from the attorney is being printed out and placed in the physical file" in the Clerk's Office, belying the "green court" designation, it is only the Court of Appeals, not the Supreme Court, and not Clerk's Office, that has been named a Law Office Climate Challenge Partner by the Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (SEER) of the American Bar Association. As indicated in this press release from April 27, 2009, of which the COA is justly proud:
The Court of Appeals of Indiana has taken a number of steps to improve the environment, including implementing a paper recycling plan in all offices, changing purchasing practices such that all copier and printer paper is 100% recycled and other office supplies are 30-100% recycled content, and implementing a policy whereby opinions to be handed down are circulated electronically instead of making a hard copy for each office.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 15, 2010 09:27 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts