Vol. 37, Number 12—December 2005

Electronic Case Filing in Federal Courts Reaches Milestone

The world's most comprehensive court electronic case filing system turned 10 years old in November 2005, 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 Files 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.

The electronic case filing system was launched in November 1995, when a team from the AO helped the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of 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.

Currently, 85 of the 94 district courts, 91 bankruptcy courts, the Court of International Trade, and the Court of Federal Claims use the CM/ECF system. It is expected that 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, 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 any time. It also is a cost-efficient and effective way for the courts to approach what previously had been a labor- and paper-intensive responsibility."

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.