Texas State Courts Inching Toward Statewide e-Filing

By Law Vendors staff

Electronic filing of documents has long offered tantalizing possibilities. Filing in a matter of minutes at any time of day. No copying or postage expenses. Instant verification from the court and instant notice to all parties of a document's filing.

So why aren't we all doing it with every document?

If you're in federal court, you are. Electronic filing is mandatory in all U.S. District Courts and is handled through PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) and its associated CM/ECF (Central Management / Electronic Case Files) system.

Texas state district and county courts, however, have been slow to embrace e-filing despite having a system, called TexasOnline e-Filing for Courts, in place. While the use of TexasOnline e-Filing has grown dramatically in the past few years, only forty-one of Texas's 254 counties accept electronic filing and the era of mandatory statewide e-filing is not yet in sight.

"It's taking longer than we thought," said Jake Stine, e-filing business solutions manager for BearingPoint, Inc. "We're dealing with attorneys and judges who are accustomed to an entrenched paper system. It's a matter of building trust in electronic storage and tracking systems.

“It’s growing each year,” Stine added. “All the major metropolitan areas are participating and it’s spreading.”

TexasOnline e-Filing is public-private partnership between the state and BearingPoint, which put up the capital, set up the system, and handles its maintenance. Unlike the self-contained federal PACER system, TexasOnline is serviced by seven certified private providers who handle the actual e-filing of documents.

"It's an open system," Stine explained. "Attorneys have a choice of which provider to use, and the providers are competing with one another and adding more features. A lot of the attorneys we've spoken with like having options."

While e-filing in the federal PACER system is free (although viewing documents in PACER costs eight cents a page), there is a fee for e-filing through TexasOnline. PACER, however, was funded by tax dollars. TexasOnline is not.

"The people who are using the system are the people who are paying for the system," Stine said. "TexasOnline is at no cost to the courts or taxpayers, and it's a revenue-generator for the state."

Besides, as Stine points out, the traditional mail-driven system has its own fees: copying, paper, and postage (certified mail of an envelope weighing less than an ounce is now well over five dollars.)

Regardless, the expansion of the system has been labored. Although some counties, most notably Travis, Harris, Bexar, and Hidalgo, are more aggressively phasing in e-filing, no county uniformly requires e-filing. Travis County is likely to be the first to go to full mandatory e-filing, and in 2008 it ordered mandatory e-filing in wide range of cases.

"Travis County has implemented mandatory e-filing for some time now," said Amalia Rodriguez-Mendoza, Travis County district clerk. "We started with a pilot program and mandated three specific types of cases at first. In general, judges and attorneys have responded very well in Travis County. Judge John Dietz, our administrative judge, has been the driving force behind our successful e-filing program. Now over seventy-five percent of our civil cases are mandated to be e-filed. Family law cases are not mandated to be e-filed yet, but may be sometime in the very near future."

In April, Harris County's 151st District Court issued an order requiring documents in new lawsuits to be electronically filed, and the rest of Harris County's district courts may not be far behind.

"They (judges) want to make sure that everything is prepared and ready to go on our end," said Harris County district clerk Loren Jackson in a recent interview on 88.7 KUHF radio. "At this point, it becomes a matter of speaking with all the various judges and working together to figure out what their requirements are, the things they would like to see happen for their individual courts, and then working out a timetable."

Unfortunately, the majority of Texas counties have not even begun to accept e-filing, much less make it mandatory, and the reasons focus on resistance to the filing fees, limited access to high-speed internet in some rural counties, and the problem of pro se parties.

"I think we need to bring all the various stakeholders into the process," Rodriguez-Mendoza said. "For example, we need to insure that self-represented litigants have access to the program. Fees have been mentioned in the past as an impediment to e-filing."

The fees are unlikely to go away in a system not funded by tax dollars. As for pro se parties, the federal PACER system allows pro se litigants to file in the traditional manner, and their filings are then scanned by court personnel and email notice sent to all parties. A similar exception may be needed in Texas courts. But ultimately, it may take orders from a higher power to resolve the issues and require e-filing in all courts.

"It's up to the Supreme Court and the legislature to make it mandatory," Stine said.

TexasOnline e-Filing for Courts
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