Mandatory eFiling

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

Maricopa County has launched an initiative to rely solely on the ECR as the official court record. However, customer demand has simultaneously increased for cost-effective, secure, and convenient access to the ECR and document filing services. In response, the Clerk of Superior Court developed its eFiling system to provide attorneys the ability to electronically file their documents with the Clerk at any time of the day. Since 2002, the Clerk has launched and expanded eFiling services from initial pilots for Civil Complex Litigation, Criminal, and Civil, to Family Court and Tax. As of May, 2011, all attorneys are required to file civil subsequent documents electronically with the Clerk’s Office. This mandate accelerated the adoption of eFiling for both attorneys and the bench, creating significant efficiencies for all. Attorneys are now able to conveniently eFile their documents through a secure web site that delivers the filing to the Clerk’s eFiling system – Clerk Review and Judge Review. When a filing is received in Clerk Review, staff are able to quickly and effectively review the details of the filing to ensure all requirements have been met, i.e., case number, document type, parties, etc, and electronically accept the filing into the Clerk’s electronic document management system (EDMS). Through the development of workflows within the eFiling system and the EDMS, the filing is routed to the appropriate division of the court where the Judicial Assistant and Judge are able to view and manage the documents, including the ability to electronically rule on certain filings. This process eliminates the need for any paper processes from the point of filing through delivery to the bench. In comparison, imaging the same filing that would have otherwise been submitted in paper requires staff to handle the filing at the file counter, transfer the paper documents to a staging area for imaging where staff must prepare the document for scanning. The scanning process then requires the labor intensive process of scanning the document, viewing the document for quality, docketing the filing, and then sending the document to the records management facility for storage. This process requires, on average, three days to complete. A final, yet significant effort is then required to quality assure the image against the paper filing before the destruction of the paper (an additional cost). Requiring all attorneys to eFile civil subsequent documents greatly reduced cost for the Clerk’s Office and for attorneys. The Clerk is able to process an equivelant number of eFilings in a fraction of the time required to accept, prep, scan, quality control, distribute, and destroy paper filings. eFiled documents are processed within 8 business hours on average 99.8% of the time. The Clerk has established a goal to reduce that timeframe to 2 hours, all with fewer resources than required for the comparable imaging process.