Judiciary's PACER Service Center Supports New Case Management System

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As the Judiciary continues to develop and install the new Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system for all court types, the staff of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) Service Center, in San Antonio, which is part of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, have assumed responsibility for supporting new CM/ECF users nationwide.

As an increasing number of courts and lawyers begin to exchange documents electronically, the availability of knowledgeable, experienced employees supporting this ambitious undertaking will be an extremely valuable resource.

"The support we are providing for CM/ECF users is not all that different than what we have been doing for regular PACER sites over the last several years," says Ted Willmann, service center manager. "We currently handle about 400 telephone calls and 100 e-mails daily, a growing number of which are related to CM/ECF.

In addition to telephone and e-mail support, the center's web site provides training materials: http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/cmecf/index.html. The site also provides basic information about CM/ECF, links to active court sites, and a set of interactive, computer-based training modules:
  • Introduction to CM/ECF.
  • Converting a file to PDF.
  • How to file documents, run queries and reports.
  • Setting up e-mail notification.
"We have worked very hard on the web site," says Willmann. "It's a comprehensive set of information to which a CM/ECF user can return again and again, to see what's new, to find out which courts are accepting electronic filings, or to seek guidance on a specific technical aspect of the electronic filing process."

"If CM/ECF users take advantage of the online training and help materials, the service center will continue to provide a level of nationwide support that belies its small size, and new CM/ECF users across the country will benefit from the support of a seasoned support team. There's still a new question every day," says Willmann. "But there are also a lot more that we have already resolved at least once, and often many, many times before."

CM/ECF was developed to replace outdated case management systems in more than 200 federal courts nationwide. The system provides enhanced case management tools for courts, as well as the capability to accept filings over the Internet and to manage complete case files electronically.

Internet access to CM/ECF data is available through the PACER program, which was launched in 1988 to provide dial-up access to court docket information by computer and modem. PACER also has facilitated access to a growing quantity of court information, including images of documents from case files of a significant number of courts.

"The changes brought by new technologies, including CM/ECF, to the way lawyers are doing business makes it crucial for us to help them through the process," says Mary Stickney, chief of the Administrative Office U.S. Courts Electronic Public Access Program since 1993. "Having the PACER Service Center fill that role provides a name, an 800 number, and an Internet address that users already are familiar with, as well as a dedicated, experienced staff."

With 23 of the 67 courts in which CM/ECF is being implemented online as of December 2001, and 9 more scheduled to receive the system every two months until deployment is completed in 2005, the staff at the PACER Service Center find themselves in a familiar role: helping attorneys get started with a new system that provides better and faster access to court data.

Service Center Support For CM/ECF

Calls for CM/ECF support generally fall into one of the following categories:

Setup and implementation. "As courts get started with CM/ECF, small problems or misunderstandings are inevitable," says Ted Willmann, PACER Service Center manager. "If a court system goes down for a short time or the look of a web page changes, we get inundated with calls."

Login problems. The service center routinely gets calls from both attorneys and the public with questions about login names and passwords. Although attorneys submitting documents in CM/ECF receive a filing login/password from each court, the service center manages the function for all public access.

General information. "We spend a lot of time explaining the benefits of the system to new users," says Willmann, "particularly in bankruptcy cases, where people who have not been in federal courts before find themselves involved in a bankruptcy proceeding to seek payment on a claim. Users call us to find out where to get information on the Internet about the case they are involved in."

Browser support. People trying to use Microsoft Internet Explorer generate a significant number of calls. CM/ECF was originally developed to work with Netscape, but tests for compatibility with Internet Explorer currently are underway.

E-mail support. A large volume of support calls relate to the e-mail notice function of CM/ECF, which provides attorneys and pro se litigants with one-time free access to documents filed in CM/ECF, where service is required by law or directed by the filer. "It's a new way of doing business," says Willmann, "and though some people are always going to have a hard time adapting to change, the feedback we have gotten from attorneys is almost uniformly positive."