efiling webinar project steering committee 2021.02.19

1Presented February 19, 2021

CLJ‐CMS eFile Webinar ‐ Presented by the Project Steering Committee

Many of our court association members serve as the project’s subject matter experts.

As you can see, we have several members from the DMCJA that serve on the three main areas of guidance for the project – the Judicial Information Systems Committee (JISC), the project’s Steering Committee, and the Court User Work Group.

We have members from the DMCMA, MPA, WSBA, ATJ, and WAPA all sharing their expertise to help deliver a new trio of systems to our courts of limited jurisdiction.

The project has contracted with Bluecrane, Inc. to provide independent oversight and verification and validation of specific deliverables for the new CLJ case management system. The purpose of Quality Assurance is to make sure the project is following best practices for IT projects and managing risks in a systematic way to ensure the final product meets the specified requirements of the CLJ courts.



Since this the first of a series of webinars sharing information on the implementation of eFiling, let’s bring you up to speed on the timeline and brief history of the project. We’re going to delve into the background of the project for a few moments so we can provide some context for how eFiling has come into play for the courts of limited jurisdiction. • A new case management system for CLJs was originally requested by the

DMCMA in 2011.• In 2012, the JISC prioritized the project to begin after SC-CMS. • All business court requirements were finalized in 2016 and specifically

included electronic filing for the courts, a new case management system, and a probation solution.

• After months of careful review, we determined that Odyssey, Odyssey File & Serve, and Tyler Supervision would meet the needs of courts of limited jurisdiction and probation offices.

• With the 2020 contract in place, we can finally replace the JIS system -which was created in 1987 in a nearly obsolete programming language that is not cost effective to bring up to today’s standards.

• Many, many dedicated judges, court administrators, court staff, and



subject matter experts have worked on this project for years. Some of these names you may recognize:

• Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst• Judge Glenn Phillips • Judge Virginia Amato, WSBA Representative prior to taking the

bench• Judge Laura Bradley, as an Access To Justice advisor• Lynne Campeau, who served as the original Project Steering

Committee Chair• Larry Barker of Klickitat County Probation • That is but a few of the many CLJ court stakeholders that have put in

countless hours to work on this effort.


Presented February 19, 2021 6

eFiling was always considered a necessary requirement of any DISCIS replacement system for the effective and efficient operation of today’s limited jurisdiction courts.

There are many benefits to eFiling: • It will eventually offer access to documents statewide for judges and court

staff.• It will reduce the amount of paper handling and storage space required in

your court.• Right now, with the COVID pandemic and new allowances for virtual

appearances, remote services are critical to continue court business and access to justice.

• It will enable you to shift your staff’s time from manual paper sorting, stamping, scanning, etc. to other functions that may be time sensitive or deadline driven

• Most importantly, eFiling now is an investment in the future. With electronic documents filed now, fewer documents will need to be scanned or converted when it’s time for you to implement the new CMS.



• When the CMS is implemented, eFiled documents will seamlessly come into the Odyssey system, and can be processed in Odyssey.

• We understand that change can be hard, but people usually love the results of modernization when it is complete.



Nearly all 50 states offer some version of electronic filing. It varies by state and within those states, it varies by county sometimes.

But eFiling is not uncommon or unusual – it’s actually become the norm in many states and have been using this type of service for several years.

And many other states are using Odyssey File & Serve successfully. There are 24 states currently live with Tyler’s eFiling and of those, 17 states have mandatory eFiling for attorneys.



As you can see from the slide, the process for eFiling is really pretty straightforward.

• A filer registers to use the system, then submits their filing by following the system prompts. There is no cost to register as a filer.

• The court clerk reviews the filing for completeness and marks it as accepted or rejected.

• If rejected, they indicate the reason and that status is passed to the filer via email.

• Documents will become available for viewing initially in JABS, and once your court has implemented the Odyssey case management system, additional functionality will be available, such as case creation, receipting of payments, etc.



We’re going to give you a quick overview of how easy it is to register as a filer, and some of the information you’ll be asked to submit.

Here you can see that you can choose to register for a Firm Account - this usually involves multiple users or a solo legal practitioner, or you can register as a self-represented litigant.

In this example, we’ve selected “self-represented litigant” and we’re entering the information requested – Name, email address, and a password to establish the account – this is pretty standard.



OFS requires you to confirm your account registration by clicking on a link sent to the email address you registered your account under. Once you’ve done that, it will ask you to put a credit card number on file, but this can be bypassed until you complete the remaining steps.



From here, you can either start a new case, or you can file additional documents into an existing case. You should already have your documents scanned in PDF format and accessible to drag and drop, or you can browse your folders and add the documents.



From here, you will be able to select the court location for your filing, select the category of filing, and select the case type associated with the category. The Court User Work Group has determined that eFiling can be used for all case types EXCEPT for initial filings in criminal and infraction cases. Only subsequent filings on criminal and infraction cases can be submitted through OFS when we first implement File & Serve.



At this point, you can enter the information on the parties, including whether you’re an attorney or pro se litigant, address and additional identifier information and so on.

During this process, you’ll also be able to decide if you want to opt in for eService.

What does the eService process look like?• If you opt in to receive electronic service through OFS, documents can be

electronically served by you to other electronic filers who have also opted in for the service. This is available at no additional cost.

• Any party who opts-in for eService can serve each other; this applies to both self-represented litigants and private attorneys.

• When using eService, you can track when each party who you electronically served received and opened the filing.



Now we’re switching to the Clerk’s view for eFiling.

Here’s an example of what the Clerk’s dashboard will look like. There are no system prompts to let a clerk know when a case or additional documents have been filed, which means that clerks will need to regularly log in to see what has been submitted.

At this screen, the court clerk can select a case, review the filing for completeness, and then mark it as accepted or rejected.

• If rejected, they will indicate the reason. That status is then passed to the filer via email.

• Documents will become available for viewing initially in JABS, and once your court has implemented the Odyssey case management system, additional functionality connected with OFS will be available, such as case creation, receipting of payments, etc.



Once the clerk has chosen the document they need to review, there are a variety of tools for them to stamp, annotate, and make notes on the document before they move it forward to the judge for review. More training on this will be provided, of course.



So now that we’ve offered a quick visual of how eFiling works, let’s talk about why eFile is being implemented statewide first, and why we should be excited about this.

• First, the CLJ-CMS Project Steering Committee and Court User Work Group determined eFiling was a critical requirement to accompany any new case management system.

• Second, we know that other states are using eFiling very successfully, and that eFiling makes it easier to see and share court documents across jurisdictions.

• The Steering Committee wanted to offer a quick benefit to courts in dire need of modernization, and deliver eFiling across the state first because we knew that it would take two to five years for some of our CLJs to receive the new CMS and probation solution, but eFiling gives them a head start on the efficiencies they will realize with the new Odyssey system. It eases the transition to less paper.



• eFiling can be completed in 1 year; it will not delay the CMS and supervision implementation.

• It allows attorneys and self-represented litigants to enjoy the benefits of easy filing from home 24 hours a day much sooner than they will be able to interact with Odyssey.

• eFiling is part of an integrated system enabling automation in the areas of case creation, docketing, accounting, and document management. Once Odyssey is implemented in your court, you will experience all of this functionality.

• Court efficiencies will be gained through eFiling. This will reduce staff chasing down lost documents, cut down on faxes, emails, and phone calls from attorneys seeking confirmation that their filing was received. eFiling will also reduce costs for paper and toner consumed by those courts that accept filings via fax or email.

We understand many courts have concerns about implementing OFS ahead of Odyssey. Please understand that we hear your concerns. We plan to meet as a Steering Committee soon to discuss this issues. If you would like to discuss the concerns of your specific court, please email us directly at [email protected].



• eFiling is a self‐funded or transaction‐based model ‐ There is no governmental appropriation for the e‐filing software and/or services.

• The $5 eFiling fee is per envelope – and an envelope is a collection of documents filed per case at one time.

• The $5 eFiling fee is a service fee charged by the vendor, Tyler Technologies, for the cost of the software implementation, as well as all the maintenance and customer service support.

• The JISC, at their December 4, 2020 meeting, was advised by AOC staff that several superior courts across the state are now requesting to implement OFS. The plan would be to implement the same charging model being used by the CLJ‐CMS Project, as it is cost neutral for the state and the courts.

• The implementation of new technology inevitably requires increased customer support – court staff will be able to refer technical questions on the eFiling process to Tyler Technologies’ customer service team rather than addressing it



themselves – this saves time and money.

• Unlike some other states, it was determined there would be no registration fee required to become an eFiler, and there would be no charges to view documents.

• The $5 fee was determined based on a review of historical CLJ caseloads, potential filings, and exceptions. Data was pulled from 2018 and 2019 to assess the average number of cases filed under the categories of Civil, Infractions, Criminal, Unlawful Harassment, and Small Claims, and this information was used to help inform how the fee structure could support the offering of the service statewide with no additional funding from the legislature.

• In addition to the eFiling fee, there is also credit card and eCheck convenience fees. These convenience fees are already in place in most courts. The details are outlined in the FAQ document we shared last week and posted online on the CLJ website.

• We have more detailed information on this in the Project FAQ under Question #34.

Comparison data for other states…• Both neighboring states of Oregon and Idaho are unified court systems and both

have made eFiling mandatory for attorneys. They do not charge attorneys or self‐represented litigants an eFiling fee, but credit card convenience fees are charged when there are statutory filing fees to be collected. Oregon also charges users to access a case and to view documents in general.

• In California, participation is determined at the county level, and OFS is used at over a dozen counties in California. The charge for eFiling in these counties varies between $3.50 to $5.00 per envelope, and they charge a 3.3% credit card convenience fee.

• In Arizona, the mandatory nature of eFiling varies by county, but they charge $6.50 for an initial electronic filing with a 3% convenience fee and then another $6.50 per lead document for subsequent submissions. Also, eService is not free – users there are charged $3.80 to use electronic service.

• In Nevada, the information on costs to file and view documents varies by county, but eFiling is mandatory for attorneys to file with their Supreme Court.

We realize we’re sharing partial data about what other states’ practices and costs are, but this webinar is not intended to provide an exhaustive history on the use of eFiling



in our country. The point we want to drive home is that eFiling is not new, it’s just new to us. And charging to use an eFiling service is not new or unusual either – not every state or jurisdiction can afford to offer the service for free.



• Civil filing fees and surcharges can be waived by judicial officers based upon the guidelines in GR 34. (Waiver of Court and Clerk’s Fees and Charges in Civil Matters on the Basis of Indigency).

• Exemptions for the $5 fee are available for protection order cases and those involving indigent parties, qualified legal services providers, or government filers such as prosecutors and public defenders.

• Per RCW 2.68.010, we don’t charge other government entities to access state judicial information systems (e.g. prosecutors or public defenders) but we do charge private defense attorneys.

• Filing fees are not charged for DV Protection Orders (RCW 26.50.040), Sexual Assault Protection Orders (RCW 7.90.055), and Stalking Protection Orders (RCW 7.92.080).

The waiver process is no different than how you would normally handle it in your court. As you consider how you will approach the waiver process in



your court, we ask you to be mindful of how often you’re waiving fees as it may impact the project’s ability to continue to provide the service.



• Consistently digitizes records enabling electronic processing.

• Mandatory eFiling for attorneys will ensure continued service and support for OFS in Washington State.

• Mandatory filings support the access and availability of documents statewide for judicial officers and others to view.

• To support mandatory filings, courts will need to create a local GR 30.

• In terms of the rule-making timeframe, there were some changes to the process and we have to allow a 30 day comment period.

We ask for a good faith effort by every court in the state to share the cost of providing access to the service.

As members of the DMCJA and DMCMA who serve on this project’s Steering Committee, we represent the interests and concerns of judges and court



administrators, especially as it concerns the impacts and outcomes of this project. We have been working on crafting a model local rule that addresses the concerns we have been hearing about how to implement eFiling in their community.



The eFiling rollout plan reflects the same rollout order as for the CMS.

We divided the rest of the state into “phases” and planned the rollout based on user count, geography and location, travel considerations, feedback we received from the courts via the survey we recently completed, and project steering committee and court user workgroup participation.

I recommend you note which number is assigned to your county in the rollout plan, as our next slide will tell you when your county is expected to implement eFiling this year.



As you may have seen already, here is the schedule for when eFiling will be rolled out.

You will notice that there is a 90 day period between when the Pilot courts implement eFiling and when they will require mandatory eFiling for attorneys.

There is a shorter period of 30 days between the go live dates and mandatory filing for attorneys for all remaining rollout phases.

The reasoning behind this is the project team will need that 90 day period to ensure everything is working as it should (they call this the stabilization period).



Now we’ll address some of the questions we’ve received from fellow judges, court administrators, and court staff. If you have a question, please submit that now via the Q&A window. We’ll try to answer as many questions as we can live, and if we aren’t able to get to your question during this session, we will follow up by email or listserv message.

While the project team is pulling questions from the Q&A box for us to answer, we’ll go ahead and talk about some of the questions we’ve already received that we think most of you will be interested in:

Prepared answers for the following questions are in the Word document.1. Can we delay implementation of eFiling?

a. The implementation of OFS is part of a large and complex project plan to implement a new and modern case management system for the CLJs and Probation Departments. Changes or modifications to the plan and schedule will impact contractual obligations and resource commitments. Therefore, the project will implement eFiling for the courts as planned and scheduled. The use of OFS



by the court, once implemented, is up to the court to decide. The FAQ, Question #42 also addresses this.

1. Can we opt out of eFiling?a. We’ve actually covered this in the FAQ as well…please refer to item #43…

2. Can we get our own eFiling system? a. If your court chooses to use and maintain a separate electronic filing

system, it will not be integrated with the Odyssey case management system. Integrating other systems into the new CMS is not within the scope of the project, nor are the costs for individual court integrations covered.

3. To avoid charging our filers, can a court contract with the OFS vendor separately so that the court would pay the cost for eFiling?

a. If a court is serious about this option, they should contact AOC for further discussion.

4. If we already have a document management system and Odyssey File & Serve doesn’t function as a DMS, how are we going to get eFiled documents into our existing DMS?

a. You may need to work from two systems for a period of time, but the project cannot integrate OFS into other document management systems. The eFiled documents will be available for easy access and viewing from the Judicial Access Browser System (JABS), similar to the current eTickets. Courts can choose to manually move their electronic files stored in File & Serve to an existing DMS your court uses, like you can with eTickets, but this will create duplicate files when we later convert your court documents into Odyssey’s DMS.

5. What will happen if we choose not to impose fees or waive all fees for users?a. That would violate the terms of the contract with the vendor. The

eFiling service and convenience fees have been contractually agreed upon. The OFS system will not allow you to avoid imposing fees. If a judge chooses to waive all fees for filers that will violate the terms of the contract the state has with Tyler Technologies, which may affect contract remedies or service to the CLJ courts.



• FAQs are available on the project website now and will be updated regularly. For those questions we weren’t able to address today, the Steering Committee and Project team will have those questions and answers added to the FAQ by the end of next week, as well as the recording of today’s webinar.

• Information sessions intended for attorneys, judges, and court staff are open for registration and the first one is scheduled for next Friday, February 26th at 12:15pm.

• Please support the project by attending these information sessions – you are not limited to attending the session designated for your locality’s Phase – you can register and attend more than one session that best suits your schedule. We will also record one of the webinars and make it available for viewing if you are not able to attend a live session.

• A Model local rule to expected to distributed in late February.



• Our Pilot courts - Fircrest/Ruston Municipal, Gig Harbor Municipal, Pierce County District and Tacoma Municipal - are already engaged and working towards their go-live with eFiling.

• The project team is currently contacting the court administrators for Phases 1 to 6 to begin the set-up of eFile merchant accounts and establishing work flows.

• We want to hear about any concerns or questions about implementing eFiling first. If you feel comfortable doing so, please send your thoughts to the project email at [email protected] so the Steering Committee can discuss them and be thoughtful about our next steps.

