SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – As California moves to modernize the way cases are filed and stored in its courts, the judiciary has opened the field of competition to companies that are vying to electronically fill jobs formerly done by clerks at the filing counter, who would then take on other tasks.
Last week, the California Judicial Council put out a request for proposals seeking e-filing managers that will act as online counter clerks, taking the filing of court documents from paper and rubber stamps to what is supposed to be a streamlined online system.
Paper filing traditionally requires a runner to deliver a new complaint to the clerk’s counter at the courthouse. A counter clerk then takes in the filing, date-stamps it, checks to see the proper filing fee has been attached, gives a receipt and drops the new filings in a bin. Traditionally, the press can then review the new filings in the bin. From there the new filings go to a different set of clerks who docket them and put them in file folders, destined for a judge’s chambers or the records room.
E-filing mimics that long-established system, where the e-file service provider is like the runner or bicycle courier that delivers the filing to the court. The e-file manager is like the counter clerk, taking in the e-filing and issuing a receipt. Human clerks still process the cases from that point on, serving much the same function as docket clerks in a paper system, and “accept” the new filing into the local court’s software system for managing cases.
The Judicial Council’s request for proposals, known as an RFP, has been a year in the making, rising from the ashes of the Court Case Management System – a statewide software project intended to link California’s 58 trial courts. Electronic filing was meant to be part of that software project.
After the demise of CCMS in 2012, tech companies swooped in to fill the void with off-the-shelf case management systems, and most of the courts now use one of four: Journal Technologies, Justice Systems Inc., Odyssey by Tyler Technologies or Thomson Reuters’ LT Court Tech. A customized version of CCMS is still used in San Diego and Orange counties.
Snorri Ogata, who heads the Judicial Council’s e-filing project, said in an interview that any vendor looking to win the statewide contract – the council hopes to choose anywhere between two and four – will have to be able to work with all of these various case management systems.
They’ll also be required to integrate with the 20 to 30 electronic court runners – referred to as electronic file service providers or EFSPs – currently operating in the courts.
“If we’re going to provide equal, fair and uniform access we’re going to have to put some protections in there,” Ogata said. “Once the court picks the e-filing manager they want to do business with, the statewide coalition EFSPs will have to work with those.”
Ogata is the chief information officer for Los Angeles Superior Court, and prior to that he held the same title for Orange County Superior, the first court in California to require e-filing for the great majority of civil filings.