ELECTRONIC FILING-MONTGOMERY COUNTY OHIO

The Clerk of Court and the General Division of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court have embarked on an exciting project that will pave the way for electronic filing of court pleadings and documents. This is a unique project in that a group comprised of representatives from the Clerk, the General Division, and the Dayton Bar Association are working together on this project. Electronic filing of court documents has been implemented in many courts in the United States including most of the Federal District Courts. The need to implement this technology is great. Like many public offices, resources in the form of space and personnel have been reduced. The storage of paper files and documents has caused archive areas to overflow. Couple this problem with the expectation that information should be easily accessible and the foundation for electronic filing becomes very clear. We must move forward now so that the clerk and court will be able to serve the needs of the legal profession and the public in the future.

RSS or real simple syndication is a tool that notifies you of any updates or information to the blog.  You can receive this notification through a personal computer or cell phone. The Electronic Filing blog generates news and information about the joint electronic project of the Montgomery County Clerk of Courts and Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, General Division.

You can pull these headlines into an RSS Reader, which keeps you up-to-date when news is posted on the electronic filing project. A RSS Reader is a very efficient time saving tool for checking content on websites or blogs without having to log on and search for content that may be useful to you.

A very good visual explanation of RSS feeds can be found at Commoncraft.  You can created an RSS feed from the e-filing blog to keep you informed about activities on the exciting project.

The Clerk of Courts, General Division, and a committee of attorneys and law office staffers have been working to develop an electronic filing system for the General Division. The development effort started by researching different business models for court electronic filing.  A transaction model involves paying a vendor an individual transaction fee for each piece of paper filed with the court.  The software model allows attorneys and litigants to file documents directly with the Clerk of Courts without incurring an additional fee.  A decision was made to adopt the software version to avoid additional costs to litigants. 

The Florida Supreme Court effectively eliminated the transaction model that would require litigants to pay additional filing fees.  The administrative order mandates basic standards that e-filing systems must maintain.