The world's most comprehensive court electronic case filing system turns 10 years old this month, after processing more than 24 million federal court cases and serving hundreds of thousands of attorneys and litigants.

The federal courts' Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system allows most U.S. district and bankruptcy courts to accept case filings over the Internet, and gives the public instant access to docket sheets and filed case documents.

There are no added fees for filing court documents over the Internet. For a modest fee, electronic access to the documents is available through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) program. Litigants receive one free copy of documents filed electronically in their case, which they can save or print. Others may view or download documents for eight cents a page, with a maximum cost per document of $2.40.

Currently, 85 district courts, 91 bankruptcy courts, the Court of International Trade, and the Court of Federal Claims use the CM/ECF system. Implementation takes about 10 months in each court. It is expected the system will be operating fully in virtually all courts, including the U.S. courts of appeals, by late 2006. A list of participating courts and additional background on CM/ECF is at: www.uscourts.gov/cmecf/cmecf_about.html.

"This is a win-win undertaking" said Leonidas Ralph Mecham, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which partnered with federal courts to develop the system. "It provides lawyers, the media, and any interested party with access to important case documents from anywhere at anytime. It also is a cost-efficient and effective way for the courts to approach what previously had been a labor- and paper-intensive responsibility."

The electronic case filing system was launched in November 1995 when a team from the Administrative Office helped the U.S. District Court in Northern Ohio cope with more than 5,000 document-intensive asbestos cases. The court faced up to 10,000 new pleadings a week, and a workload that quickly became unmanageable. Together the team developed a system that allowed attorneys to file and retrieve documents and receive official notices electronically.

The system's impact was felt most significantly last month when the Bankruptcy Reform Act took effect. In October 2005, more than 600,00 bankruptcy petitions were filed nationwide, compared to 130,679 in October 2004. Some bankruptcy courts worked around-the-clock and throughout the weekend to process the cases, but without CM/ECF, the courts would not have been able to cope with the unprecedented workload.

"There are not many projects that warrant such praise," Mecham said, "but CM/ECF has forever changed the way federal courts conduct business and the way the public accesses court records. It will go down in history as one of the most significant milestones in federal court operations."