The
Florida Bar News recently featured an article “Mandatory e-filing in civil
cases begins in April.” This article also described how the e-filing Authority
Board has “asked the Legislature for $1.1 million to fund a help desk to assist
lawyers with e-filing.” Perhaps I am naive, but this funding request seems
unnecessary.
Lawyers
are smart people. I find it difficult to believe that there are many attorneys
out there who really need significant assistance with such a rudimentary
process as e-filing. Most have purchased books from Amazon, plane tickets
from Travelocity, or items from eBay. They are already familiar with the
internet, and their staff are likely more so. The Leon County Clerk is quoted in the
Bar News article. He says “My full expectation is come April 1, most of the
filings will come in by paper . . . most of the attorneys will ignore it [the
e-filing deadline].” He explains that despite his office’s effort at educating
attorneys, only 10 percent of his Circuit’s filings are being submitted
electronically.
If
e-filing saves attorneys money, they will come. If e-filing saves attorneys
time, they will come. As the voice kept telling Kevin Costner in Field of
Dreams, “if you build it, they will come.” This is likely true, but only if
“you build it right.” That is, build it so that it saves lawyers time and
money. The corollary will naturally be true. That is, build it right, to save
lawyers time and money and it will likewise save the clerks, courts, and state
money.
The
Office of Judges of Compensation Claims initiated electronic filing in 2005.
Early adopters were admittedly few and far between. The early adopters will
remember that the OJCC did not even publicize the existence of e-filing, the
early adopters fortuitously found the new process on our website. This handful
of practitioners saw the benefits of the program and became regular users. They
saved time and money. They were complimentary, and their enthusiasm was
infectious. They spread the word and others followed. Attorneys followed those
leaders to the process because it saved them time and money. They followed
because using e-filing made sense economic to them.
In
2006, we began promoting e-filing. We conducted seminars in multiple cities. We
used some commercial software and built some online tutorials. From a few
hundred e-filed documents monthly, the OJCC grew to about 40,000 e-filed
documents monthly. In 2010, the Florida legislature made e-filing mandatory for
represented parties in workers’ compensation. This was the culmination of a
gradual process. The benefits of e-filing drew users to the process. The
mandate to use it followed years of voluntary transition. During those
transition years, people learned to use and accept the process. During those
years the attorneys who advocated for the process showed their friends,
partners, and even opponents how to use this process to save time and money.
The
Florida Supreme Court has set an April 1 deadline for mandatory electronic
filing in the state civil trial courts. E-filing was mandatory with the Supreme
Court on February 27. The Court’s transition over months will be more traumatic
than our OJCC transition over years.
The
court's e-filing Authority Board admits that fine-tuning of the e-filing portal
remains. It is unclear whether the Clerks can or will enforce the April 1, 2013
deadline. Will they turn away paper filings? According to the Bar News Article,
the Clerks remain unclear on whether they have the authority to do so. The
Supreme Court Clerk says he will do so, effective February 27. How the Clerks
handle this transition will affect how attorneys and staff react to civil
e-filing. The more assistance and patience they provide, the better the
transition will go.
Of
all the issues the Authority is currently discussing, the most troubling is
their request for a $1.1 million dollar appropriation from the Legislature,
primarily to fund a ten-employee “help desk to assist lawyers with e-filing.”
The personnel for this help desk will perhaps require some training, in order
to be the new trainers for attorneys.
However,
the e-filing Authority Board needs to recognize that e-filing creates a variety
of economic benefits for litigants and for the clerks. When e-filed documents
arrive at the clerk’s office, for example, there is no need to open paper
envelopes, straighten pages, pull staples, or scan documents. These tasks are
avoided, and the e-filing process allows clerk staff to instead manage images
of documents that have been scanned and filed by the case parties. In short,
processing images (PDF) is much less labor-intensive than processing paper.
This
means that clerks across Florida will have less workload managing and
processing paper. These existing employees already have a significant knowledge
in the filing process. They can be trained to better understand the new
electronic filing alternative. They can then put that knowledge base to work
assisting the attorneys, and their staff, who require help with e-filing. These
existing clerk employees, already funded in current budget allocations, can
easily provide the assistance that is required through the transition to
e-filing. They can transition from opening envelopes and scanning
documents to being the local “help desk” in their community and can assist their
customers.
The
Office of Judges of Compensation Claims made the transition to e-filing eight
years ago. The OJCC has never requested any special appropriation to support
this new electronic paradigm. No help desk funding has been sought. Existing resources
within this agency have been scraped together, effectively managed, and
leveraged for the good of this marketplace. To date, the OJCC has not yet
invested a total of $1 million in developing, deploying and marketing this
sophisticated and efficient e-filing system. Just as the deployment of this
program was done with existing resources, the OJCC has retrained and
reallocated existing human resources to provide support and training for
attorneys and paralegals.
Granted,
we are a small agency. Granted, the volume of attorney customers and the volume
of documents will be larger in civil proceedings. However, the volume of clerk
support in the civil system is likewise much larger. The impact of e-filing on the civil clerk’s workload will be proportional. As the need for paper handlers in
the various clerk’s offices decreases, those people can be trained to provide
phone support for the attorneys who remain unsure of how to proceed. Thus, the
agency that enjoys the benefits of e-filing reallocates its resources to
support it. At the outset, this will stress existing clerk resources. However,
the benefits of e-filing will rapidly follow, and a million-dollar help desk
investment can be foregone.
Attorneys
should note the February 27 deadline for Supreme Court electronic filings and the April 1 date for civil trial court e-filings. Attorneys should note the October
1 deadline for all criminal filings. And the deadlines for the District Courts,
July 22 for the Second District Court of Appeal, September 27 for the Third
DCA, October 31 for the Fourth DCA, November 27 for the Fifth DCA, and December
27 for the First DCA. Notably, the First and the Fifth have been using e-filing
for years, to the delight of their customers. The Federal Courts have been
likewise.
Between
all of these experiences, on the net generally, OJCC e-filing (e-JCC),
Administrative Law e-filing (e-ALJ), the appellate courts (e-DCA), and the
Federal Courts (PACER), there are a great number of Florida lawyers and
paralegals who are already comfortable with e-filing and ready to proceed with
the new paradigm in Florida’s trial courts. Those that are not will transition
rapidly. A great many attorneys have already proven that they can do so on the
platforms mentioned above.
