KCBA CLE Programs on New E-Filing Mandates: May 5th and May 14th For Information, go to www.kcba.org/CLE
Have you heard that King County Superior Court and Clerk’s Office are implementing mandatory electronic filing (e-filing) starting June 1?
By now this buzz is common information. Proposed Local Court Rules to implement this initiative, as authorized by GR 30, were recently published for review and comment. As you are reading this, the court is working through your comments and preparing a final version of the rules relative to e-filing.
The most common questions we get about the e-filing system come from comparisons to the U.S. District Court’s model. Many folks imagine that King County and the U.S. District Court would have very similar systems. In fact, the King County system falls under the auspices of state General Rule 30, which lays the foundation for some very fundamental differences between the federal and state systems.
GR 30 was written and adopted in 2003, way before any state court started making the move toward mandatory e-filing, and it was updated just a few years ago, in 2005. The 2005 changes were liberating in a lot of ways and set the stage for a much cleaner e-filing process. However, major differences still exist between state court and federal systems, and most were deliberate.
Included on the KCBA website at http://www.kcba.org/pdf/superiorcourt.pdf are the most frequently asked questions we get about mandatory e-filing. We hope that a quick read through these questions and answers will give you some relief and piece of mind. These FAQs also are available on the clerk’s website.
As we have mentioned in this space before, the mandatory e-filing project in King County is being developed for many good reasons, but the primary and overriding reason to mandate e-filing at this time is the savings it generates. The court and the clerk’s office have significant reductions in their respective 2009 (and 2010) budgets and mandatory e-filing eliminates many labor-intensive steps from the filing process that are now performed by staff in the clerk’s office.
Your feedback and the feedback of the judges and court staff involved in the 2008 pilot project on e-filing shaped the direction of this program. Due to this input, some categories of documents will be excluded from mandatory e-filing during the first year of implementation, while issues with those documents are being addressed.
Also because of the pilot and the input, the e-filing system will offer a much improved ability to send electronic working papers to the court, for those interested in utilizing that service. This service is fee-based and there for your use, if you so choose. There are some exceptions for the use of this service as well — review this topic and details carefully.
The clerk’s website is the place to find the best information about mandatory e-filing, including trainings that we’ll be offering. Please make this one of your “favorites” — http://www.kingcounty.gov/courts/Clerk.aspx.
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