Category Archives: eFiling

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More Filing Problems

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I know I complained a couple of days again about the difficulty in getting a file from the courthouse in Illinois. It turns out, however, that Peter Olson was right: at least I got the file I wanted.

Today I had the “pleasure” of retrieving a file from the clerk’s office in Cook County. When I got the file, I flipped through it looking for a couple of key documents: the Complaint and the Answer, both of which were filed in 2005.

I found lots of orders, and other miscellaneous documents, including the summons. Strangely, however, there was no complaint or answer? I could be wrong here, but I had always believed that the Complaint was the document that started the file making process in the clerk’s office. It appears that I am wrong.

On the bright side, I did find two documents from unrelated files that were included in my file. Maybe I should have checked those files for for the Complaint.

I have no doubt that efiling will not solve all of the problems in the court system. However, it would certainly go a long way toward doing so.

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Why is Illinois Stuck in the 19th Century?

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I am still fuming from an experience that I had in a local court clerk’s office yesterday. I had a meeting outside of the office. While I was out, one of my partners contacted me and asked me if I was near the courthouse. It seemed that one of his divorce clients had another case pending against her. He wanted copies of the important documents in the file, as it appeared that she would be hiring us to represent her in that matter as well.

Given that I was near the courthouse, I figured that it would be no problem for me to stop by and check things out. Despite the fact that I have been wrong before (cue snarky comment from wife), I have rarely been more wrong than I was in this situation.

First, it’s ridiculous that I have to go to the courthouse to find out basic useful information about a case. Nevertheless, it is the only option. So off to the courthouse I went. Unfortunately, it turns out that the one person who can order up files from the file room was otherwise occupied. Thus, I had to wait approximately 20 minutes before anyone bothered to order my file. After that, I had another 20 minute wait before I finally got my file. After getting the file, I had to review it, identify the documents that I wanted copies of, and then have them copied.

Finally, after almost an hour in the courthouse, I finally had paper copies of my documents. The kicker of course, is that when I got my copies, the clerk did not copy the physical document from the court file. Instead, she simply printed it from the electronic version on the computer system.

I then took my paper copies (which had been printed from electronic versions, which had been scanned from paper documents) back to my office and gave them to my assistant, who promptly scanned them back into electronic documents so that I could actually work with them.

People often complain about the amount of time that litigation takes as well as the high cost of legal services. Here is one reason for that time and cost: Institutionalized inefficiencies. The reality is that I performed this task in the most efficient manner possible, yet it was horribly inefficient.

Further, the process is no better for the clerk’s office than it is for me. With a proper efiling and electronic access to documents, the clerk would no longer need to take the paper documents and scan them in. Also, the clerk would not have to allocate employee time to scanning documents, making documents available to the public, or making copies of the documents. Changing the system benefits both the attorneys and the clerk’s office. Yet, because of the institutionalized inefficiencies that were currently face in Illinois, I see little hope for meaningful change in the near future.

As I have noted before, people from outside Illinois are dumbfounded at the fact that we have no electronic access to court files.

The reality is that I should have been able to access the court documents from my desk and obtain an electronic copy of the ones that I needed. At least in this county, the hard work as been done. All of the documents exist electronically. The fact that I am prohibited from accessing them or obtaining copies of them unless I drive to the courthouse is simply asinine.

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Illinois and Electroinic Access to Court Files

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I know that I have been blogging about this issue a fair amount lately. However, I think that it is the one area that can most dramatically improve our practice as well as our efficiency.

Last night I had dinner with, among others, an attorney from another state. At one point in the evening, the topic of conversation turned to efiling and electronic access. When I explained the electronic access availability that we have in Illinois (which, for all intents and purposes, is nonexistant), he was dumbfounded. When I explained to him that, to get a copy of a document from a court file, I have to physically travel to the courthouse, I bet I could have knocked him over with a feather.

It is disappointing to see that Illinois is so far behind the curve on this issue. It is refreshing to see, however, that a disinterested third party shares my opinions on the abysmal state of efiling and electronic access here in the Land of Lincoln.

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Benefits of PACER

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Bonnie Scucha points us toward an article from the federal courts describing the effects of PACER. PACER is the electronic access system that allows users to access and retrieve electronic copies of court files. The article reports that:

Hundreds of millions of pages of court documents retrieved online each year by customers who numbers are approaching 750,000. Less attention, however, has focused on PACER’s impact on court staffs.

“It’s definitely changed the way our office does business, and I think it’s been a change for the better,” said Monica Menier, clerk of the bankruptcy court in the Middle District of Louisiana.

“Back in the paper world, we constantly had law firm runners who came to the clerk’s office to make copies of case files. They’d have to drive to the courthouse, find a parking place, feed the meter, and pay 50 cents per copy. Helping them consumed a lot of staff time,” she said. “Those days are gone.”

David Weaver, clerk of court and court administrator in the Eastern District of Michigan, offers a similar assessment. “We once had 12 case-searching terminals in a public area of our office, but eight of those terminals are gone. Very little walk-up business remains. We don’t have file clerks anymore.”

I just wish that our courts in Illinois would realize the benefits of allowing us to have remote electronic access to court files. I consider it a terrible shame that it is much easier for me to retrieve a document from a federal court file in Seattle, Texas, or New Jersey, than it is for me to retrieve a document from DuPage County, where I practice regularly.

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Illinois’s Court System Failure: No Electronic Access to Files

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One of the areas that Illinois is seriously lagging behind on in eFiling of documents and electronic access to court files. I am constantly frustrated when I look at the baby steps that are being taken in Illinois as compared to what has already been completed in other states.

For example, New York has efiling and electronic access to court records. To check out New York’s system, follow the simple instructions provided by Above the Law.

Our backwardness has now reached national attention. In a Law.com article published on February 26, Lynne Marek notes that Illinois courts (along with several others) are lagging behind when it comes to electronic access.

Cook County is one of many U.S. counties, including San Diego in California and Kings in New York, that hasn’t kept pace with 21st century technological advances that have enabled electronic systems to come to some state courts, such as Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona and the district courts of Harris County in Texas.

Those highly wired courts — along with the nearly 10-year-old federal electronic system called Pacer — have set a higher standard for electronic access and are drawing other state courts, such as those in Illinois, Florida and California, toward technological benefits.

The article accurately notes the reasons that attorneys are looking for electronic access:

 For lawyers, the key is electronic access to files over the Internet and the ability to file electronically, allowing them to spend less time and money traveling to the courthouse. It also increases predictability in filing a document in court, attorneys said.

Finally, the electronic dockets help ensure that judges aren’t searching for documents missing from case files during hearings, they added.

In short, eFiling and electronic access is all about using technology to practice law more effectively. Unfortunately, there appears to be an institutional bias against this here in Illinois:

Cook and other counties in Illinois are barred by the state’s Supreme Court from making documents available on the Internet mainly because of privacy concerns. Across the country, such concerns relate to everything from identity theft to children viewing parents’ divorce filings. For many states though, including Illinois, Florida and Texas, guidance from officials is still in flux.

eFiling and electronic access would also help eliminate some of the problems that currently exists with respect to the proper filing of documents in court files. As noted in the article:

When Chicago litigator Victor Henderson sends an assistant to the Cook County Courthouse in Chicago to retrieve a filing, he hopes for a bit of luck.

“We send them over and cross our fingers and hope it will come back,” said Henderson, an attorney in Holland & Knight’s Chicago office. “The confidence level is only 80 or 90 percent that, if you ask for something, it’s going to be there. With a lawsuit, it has to be 100 percent.”

Yesterday, I saw first hand an example of this. I witnessed a contested hearing in front a judge in law division, in a case that had recently been transfered from chancery. In the chancery division, the judge had decided part of the case and that portion was on appeal. The judge questioned the attorneys about where in the appellate process that appeal was. The attorneys explained that the record on appeal still had not yet been filed because the clerk’s office could not find all of the documents in the file. Instead, the clerk’s office was putting together the record on appeal using documents from the court file as well as documents from the attorneys’ files.

I am not saying that eFiling will solve all problems. However, it will certainly make the practice of law more efficient. This efficiency should benefit all parties in the legal system, the parties, the attorneys, the judges, and the clerks.