FEDERAL COURT LAWYERS

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HANDLING ELECTRONIC FILING

By Jon Katz

Note: This article provides practical tips to lawyers anticipating litigation in the United States District Courts of the District of Columbia and Maryland, which both are pursuing electronic case filing. 

Electronic fling is easy once you get used to it. Electronic case filing is happening in the United States District Courts of the District of Columbia and Maryland. 

For those attorneys anticipating handling District of Columbia and Maryland federal trial court cases in the near future, doing the electronic filing will go more smoothly by preparing in advance. To wait to receive a court order to do electronic case filing may catch you and your staff when you have barely any time to learn and implement the electronic filing system.

The following advance preparation will be helpful:

- Get a different Pacer account for everyone on your staff (go to http://www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov ).

- Get and learn to use at least one scanner, to scan in your exhibits for electronic case filing (under $100 or $200 for a reliable HP scanner at Staples/Office Depot. More money for faster and high-volume automatic-feed scanning).

- Identify an outside provider to handle your high volume scanning work (e.g., Clicks or ABC printing).

-    Buy and learn Adobe Acrobat writer to load with a license for every computer terminal you'll need it on. Save Adobe text files by going to the print function of your wordprocessor, and not to Adobe's save function. Adobe costs under $300 for a single computer license, from Staples/Office Depot. Adobe Reader is free to download: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html . You might need to disable your anti-virus software when installing Adobe writer.

- Make sure that at least one of your computers is powerful enough to upload, read, and save Adobe files. Otherwise, your computer might handle no other Internet functions for a minute or more until the Adobe file is loaded.

- Get high speed Internet, for filing and receiving electronic documents with fewer bottlenecks.

- Start practicing with the court's electronic filing page: http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/ecf.html

- Get electronic filing accounts for the DC and MD US District Courts now, for each attorney at your firm who's licensed with the court. Institute sufficient security controls over your staff's access to and use of your user ID and password for doing electronic filing. Attend the free morning training class now, at the DC US District Court.

- Once you have an electronic case filed, read all e-mails to you that do not list an addressee. You will be notified only by e-mail of a new case filing for your case (including court orders) through this method. For those of you who use e-mail filters to sort your e-mail, you can sort these court messages through identifying the sending e-mail address: dcd_ElectronicFiling@dcd.uscourts.gov, or by the subject line's starting language, which is "Activity in case ...". This is enough reason to have your e-mail monitored as often as your snail mail.

- The District of Columbia federal trial court will be flexible in extending deadlines for understandable technical humps in doing electronic case filing, but not for jurisdictional deadlines. The better practice probably is to avoid any late filing caused by electronic filing, through also filing your document on time at court (on computer disk with Adobe with an explaining Praecipe, if your Adobe is still working; or in paper, if you're Adobe is not working).

    Because of the need to invest a few hundred dollars into Adobe writer software and a scanner for one computer alone (plus money for a sufficiently powerful computer), hopefully reasonable exemptions will be made for pro se filers and cash-strapped public interest groups. 

2003.

     Marks & Katz fights tirelessly for justice for our clients, with 30 years of combined experience. We are driven to win, put our clients ahead of money, and are ever-passionate for our clients and their causes. Our law partners Jay Marks and Jon Katz serve our clients directly, with caring and understanding. Jay and Jon met in 1969, attended public school together, trust each other deeply, revel in the thrill of victory, and fight side by side. We opened in 1998, and look forward to many more years of doing good for our clients and society. We are dedicated to justice, welcome tough cases, and never shy away from controversy. 

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