The basic concept of efiling is that the filers (attorneys, self represented parties, and others) create documents and submit them to the court. Each time a filer sends a submission to the court the submission is time-stamped when it is received in the the Clerk Review queue. The submissions are then reviewed by the clerks at the court to determine if the documents and information are acceptable and if payment for court fees can be made. If the clerk finds that the information and documents in the submission are acceptable the clerk will electroncially docket the information into the courts case management system and store the electronic documents in a repository. Before the clerk actually reviews the submission the efiling system does some checking as well. For example if one of the documents that the filer included in the submission has a virus, the system rejects the submission and tells the filer that their submission was rejected because of a virus. So if you are under a deadline to get your documents to the court and you don't have a good anti-virus software installed on your system you could be transmitting documents with viruses and the system will detect and reject your submission. Once your submission has been processed by the clerk a receipt is returned to the filer. If the submission was to initiate a case then the receipt will include a new case number and possibly the judge assigned to the case.
Each time someone efiles something to a case notifications are distributed to other participants on the case. This notificaiton allows the other parties on the case to view what was submitted. There are some exceptions to notifications. The efiling system also broadcasts notifications when the court efiles a judgement to the participants on a case.
The Filers Interface is where the filer logs in to efile and review notifications. Creating a submission means the filer will fill out data on the web and upload documents. When the filer is finished filling out the data and uploading documents everything is packaged into a submission using the LegalXML format. The filer is then asked to review the information. When the filer determines that everything is correct they submit the information. The package is then transmits to the Clerk Review Interface where the submission is time-stamped. It is important that the time-stamp does not occur when the filer presses the submit button but when the package is posted in the Clerk Review queue. The features of the Filers Interface include:
The Clerk Review Interface is where the clerk logs in and reviews submissions that have been received from a Filers Interface. There could be multiple Filers Interfaces that transmit to the Clerk Review Interface. The clerk can change any data that the filer entered. The features of the Clerk Review include:
You can initiate several types of cases through the
efiling system and efile follow-up filings on those case types.