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efiling questions
The options for both technology and
business model vary greatly today. Here is a list of questions that
a court could start with when considering an efiling initiative.
General
- Why
are we considering efiling?
- Is it to appease attorneys and
make it easy for them to file?
- Or, is it to bring efficiencies
to the court and reduce manual processes?
- What does electronic filing mean
to my organization? There are several definitions of efiling.
What is ours? What do we want it to be?
- What type of efiling model should
I deploy? ASP/hosted or software license?
Paper and Fax Process
- Does the process of filing electronically
cost more or less?
- Do I want to eliminate the process
of scanning documents?
- How does the attorney get a receipt
from the court for his/her filing?
- Can the court charge differently
for one process over another?
- What method of communication
is used to transmit the information?
- How do you keep the communication
private?
- How will case documents be stored,
shared, and retrieved?
- Where is the official document
of the court stored?
- Who owns the server on which
official court documents are stored?
- How secure is the document repository?
- How secure is the transmission
of court documents?
- How secure is the authorized
access?
- How secure is the business entity
that hosts the document repository?
- Who owns the official court documents
if the repository vendor goes out of business?
Court Automation
- How easy is it for an attorney
to submit a filing? It must take less time than before.
- Will the system support document
filing types that are familiar to the attorney? (Word, WordPerfect,
PDF, etc.)?
- Will the submission be in a format
that is automatically accepted by the courts' CMS?
- Does the court want to automate
the collection of filing fees?
- Will the system readily accept
credit card information?
- Will the transaction be reported
in the court accounting system?
- What determines the "official"
time of submission? When the clerk receives it? When the court
system receives it and updates the case management system?
- If filing to a central repository,
is the official submission time the time at which it arrives at
the repository, or the time at which the court clerk downloads
it from the repository into the case management system?
- If filing to a central repository,
is having received the submission into the court case management
system deemed valid, considering the actual document still resides
at the central repository?
- Who controls the original court
document?
- Where are the original documents
stored?
- At what point is the electronic
filing time stamped as received?
- How does the court control the
integrity of the documents during transmission?
- How does the court protect the
document from being tampered with when stored in the central repository?
- Are electronic or digital signatures
needed?
- How do we identify that the right
user posted the documents?
- Should it cost more to file electronically
than manually?
- How does the vendor who controls
the central document repository make a profit?
- Who determines which people can
send documents to the courts?
- Does the court contract with
a single vendor who then controls the document repository?
- Does choosing one vendor prevent
the courts from using other document repositories or Application
Service Providers (ASP's)?
- If the court allows the use of
more than one ASP, does that mean there will be more than one
document repository?
- Can any organization develop
and install software to electronically file to the courts without
pre-approval by the courts?
Automating Both the Attorney and
the Court Process
- Does the court want attorneys
to be able to automate the process of updating their case management
systems? This option allows attorneys to be more efficient and
thus use the system more.
- How will you provide for attorneys
that won't be updating their systems?
- Will attorneys be able to file
firm-to-firm when necessary?
- What are the business requirements
of this system?
- How can the court control the
business model?
- Will there be a simple interface
to use for those attorneys that don't automate their own system?
- What methods are there for dealing
with digital certificates and digital signatures?
- How can multiple document repositories
participate with the court?
- What methods will be used for
filing fee collection?
- Will the system provide for digitally
signed court receipts?
- How will the system ensure document
integrity?
- What constitutes system security?
- What standards does the system
conform to?
- How does the system use the LegalXML
Court Filing 1.1 DTD?
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