Bar supports efforts to eliminate paper filings
Bar supports efforts to eliminate paper filings
Senior Editor
Circuit chief judges should get involved when lawyers ignore the requirement to electronically file court documents in Florida and continue to drop paper filings off at clerks of courts’ offices.
The Rules of Judicial Administration Committee has approved in concept an amendment to Rule of Judicial Administration 2.520(f), which addresses paper filings. The committee was acting at the request of the Supreme Court’s Florida Courts Technology Commission to take a look at lawyers who are not complying with the mandate, with limited exceptions, to file court documents through the court system’s statewide portal.
Bar President Greg Coleman told the committee that the Bar is committed to educating lawyers about the filing rules and seeing that they comply with them, since violations create problems for clerks and judges and drain their limited time and resources.
“We need to be aware of this; this is something everyone needs to be complying with,” Coleman said, noting he has been contacted by FCTC Chair Judge Lisa Munyon about the problem.
He said the Bar is also using social media and other ways to reach members with the message and pledged that the Bar and the Board of Governors would continue to pursue that goal.
Although parts of Rule 2.520 require lawyers to electronically file documents, subsection (f) provides that, “No clerk of court shall refuse for filing any document or paper because of noncompliance with the rule. However, upon request of the clerk of court, noncomplying documents shall be resubmitted in accordance with this rule.”
That ambiguity has caused concern among clerks over how to handle paper filings, which don’t follow the rule but which they cannot reject.
There can also be a duplication problem if the clerk puts the paper filing in the record and then the lawyer refiles it electronically.
Robert Eschenfelder, who chaired the RJA subcommittee that looked at the issue, said clerks are still getting more than 15,000 improper paper filings a month, many of those dealing with foreclosure cases and some of those handled by out-of-state firms. (The portal is averaging about 1.1 million filings involving 1.7 million documents per month.)
He said the committee was uncomfortable with amending the rule and authorizing clerks to unilaterally reject paper filings, noting that could harm clients for the bad conduct of their attorneys and would also give clerks more than ministerial duties to accept and file court documents.
“We did all agree the clerks have a serious concern, particularly in those counties where the foreclosure work is responsible for those filings and the [nonlocal] attorneys don’t care what the local judges think,” Eschenfelder said. “Instead we [passed] a rule that would put the onus on local chief judges to adopt administrative orders that would allow the matter to be dealt with at the circuit level and compel the clerks to report all such violations.”
That administrative order or other procedure set up by the chief judge would be used to deal with the violation, he said.
In addition to requiring the clerk to report the violations, the proposed rule provides: “If an administrative order has been issued determining the method of reporting and/or resolving noncompliance with this rule, then reporting and resolution shall be by that method. Otherwise, the reporting noncompliance shall be by a method agreed to by the clerk of court and the chief judge of the relevant court.”
“It gives the clerks an avenue and puts the impetus on the judges of various courts to really deal with the issue by administrative order and step in and deal with this when the attorneys are being recalcitrant,” Eschenfelder said.
The approval in concept means the proposed rule amendment will come back to the committee at its January meeting. If approved there, it will be forwarded to the Bar Board of Governors for its review and then go to the Supreme Court.
The Florida Courts E-Filing Authority, which oversees the electronic filing portal, has looked at the problem, but members were skeptical they had authority to correct the errant lawyers.
RJA Chair Murray Silverstein said he thinks the problems with paper filings are not deliberate or malicious; rather the fast changing transfer to electronic from paper courts has left some lawyers behind. He predicted such problems will disappear in a couple years.
