Inside the Bar
December 2008
Wisconsin Supreme Court adopts in principle e-filing in appellate
and supreme courts
On Oct. 28, the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously adopted, in
principle, rule amendments introducing electronic filing in the state
appellate courts and the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Petitions 08-15
and 08-18
were filed by the court of appeals and the clerk of the supreme court,
respectively. It is anticipated the rules will be effective July 1,
2009.
The rules will require that an electronic copy of briefs, no-merit
reports, and petitions for review be filed with the clerk of the supreme
court and the court of appeals. Although electronic briefs must be filed
when the paper copies are filed, the timeliness of the filing date will
be determined by the date the paper copy is filed, and the paper copy
will be used for jurisdictional purposes.
Filing briefs electronically will be mandatory for lawyers and
guardians ad litem but optional for self-represented parties. Both
attorneys and non-attorneys still must serve paper copies of briefs and
appendices on the opposing party.
The court disagreed with the proposed rule that would have prevented
the public from getting access to electronic copies of filed briefs. The
court agreed that briefs – unless confidential or sealed –
should be made available to the public as soon as possible. The court
also agreed that all briefs shall be filed as separate documents in
text-searchable portable document format (PDF). A text-searchable PDF
document is converted directly from Word™ or WordPerfect™
instead of being scanned.
However, appendices that might contain financial information, Social
Security numbers, and account numbers will not be accessible. An
electronic non-searchable PDF of appendices will be available only to
the parties involved and the court. (A non-searchable PDF is a scanned
image rather than a document converted from Word or WordPerfect.)
Clerk of Supreme Court David R. Schanker noted that PDF is a
universal format used in documents and courts throughout the country.
“Free software is available for conversion of documents from Word
or WordPerfect to PDF. There is very little in way of expense, and we
don’t expect that will be a problem.
“The scanning of appendices is another story,” he said.
“We acknowledge that many attorneys throughout Wisconsin
don’t have scanning equipment, and that is why we don’t want
to require a scanned appendix at this time.”
Wisconsin Court of Appeals Chief Judge Richard S. Brown told the
court the proposed rules represent an important step toward electronic
filing in the appellate courts. The availability of briefs, no-merit
reports, and appendices in electronic form will enable court of appeals
judges to view these case materials on their computers, search for
specific terms, jump to a location within a brief, copy text, link to
cited cases and statutes, and take advantage of the portability and ease
of transmission of electronic files.
“This is the first step in the larger scope which will greatly
facilitate more efficient and timely appeals,” said Brown.
“Many judges do our brief reading on the road because we have a
huge volume of cases. If we could just use a flash drive or a computer
it would make a significant difference in how we do our work. This will
be a great help to us, not just in reading briefs, but in oral
arguments. If an issue comes up in oral argument that we didn’t
think was going to be raised or we thought was in the briefs but we
weren’t sure, we can do a text search and call up a key phrase and
can actually read it to the parties while the question is being
discussed. It also will help us in writing the actual opinion because we
can cut and paste right from the brief.”
The appellate court unanimously supports the court of appeals
petition.
History. In January 2008, the U.S. District Court
for the Western District of Wisconsin became the last federal district
court in the nation to implement electronic filing. In April, the
Wisconsin Supreme Court approved the adoption of a new rule, effective
July 1, 2008, governing the use of e-filing in Wisconsin’s circuit
courts.
The Consolidated Court Automation Programs (CCAP) has created a
highly functional, easy-to-use, Web-based e-filing system, which has
been successfully tested for two years in a pilot project in Washington
and Kenosha counties. The system automatically updates the case record
and associates filed documents with the circuit court case management
system. The same system will be used for e-filing.
At the October hearing, Schanker acknowledged CCAP and the
extraordinary work that it has done to create the system that will make
appellate e-filing possible. “We have an extraordinary case
management system in our circuit courts and eventually that will be
integrated with the appellate e-filing system. The rules that we have
before you today are an initial step toward e-filing the purpose of
which is primarily to provide these documents in electronic form to the
justices and judges of the appellate courts.”
Although both petitions seek an effective date of July 1, 2009, for
the proposed rules, it is expected that the system will be up and
running before then, and the petitioners hope lawyers will begin using
the system on a voluntary basis early in 2009. The State Bar supports
both petitions.
Read
an in-depth article in the September Wisconsin Lawyer™
magazine.
Inside the
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