Introducing the Electronic Court Filing (ECF) 3.0 Specification

1. www.oasis-open.org Introducing the Electronic Court Filing (ECF) 3.0 Specification LegalXML’s Electronic Court Filing Specification (Approved by the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee as a Recommended Standard)

2. Today’s Topics • ECF Basics • Standardization • Background • Business Needs Supported • Benefits of the Standard • Future Directions • Case Study

3. Why do I need to know about Electronic Court Filing technical standards? • As state and local courts prepare for electronic filing, they must pay attention to what all other courts are doing…because… • A system is required to cover technical actions and information-exchanges to accomplish all necessary tasks for e-filing. • If each court or vendor designed e-filing in its own way… • Those who e-file in one court would have difficulty e-filing in a second court that does e-filing differently. • No one could comply with the technical requirements of many fundamentally different e-filing systems. • Litigants would choose not to e-file and e-filing systems would fail! • There must be technical standards on which all e-filing systems are based if e-filing is to succeed in state and local courts.

4. What does use of technical standards in our electronic court filing systems get us? • “Interoperability” • E-filing systems become “inter-operable” by complying with the same technical standards. • E-filing messages can be transmitted, understood, and accepted… • Between one attorney or filer and another • Between a filer and a given court • Between a filer and other courts • Between different courts • …Even though each court and each firm or individual will have separately developed e-filing applications, use different operating systems, and run “incompatible” computer systems.

5. What technical things need standardizing? • E-filing involves XML (eXtensible Markup Language) technology • XML is both powerful and complex. • It has strict rules and practices that must be exact. • Different systems must use the same data tags and terms in order to be compatible at the technical level. • E-filing requires a common filing “architecture” • Different systems need the same basic design elements to perform necessary e-filing functions. • The “messages” necessary for e-filing transactions must be built in the same ways.

6. What about e-filing business practices? • If each e-filing system is designed locally, being quite different from others… • Users would need to master many different business rules and practices. • A proposed standard for electronic filing business and process practices was adopted for courts in 2003. See it at: • http://ncsconline.org/D_Tech/standards/Documents/pdfdocs/Recommended_%20Process_%20standards_02_26_03.pdf • This document has a very good introduction to the basic concepts of electronic filing (approx. the first 50 pages).

7. Filer Electronic Filing Service Provider E-Filing Manage-ment Service Court Case Management (CMS) and Document Management (DMS) systems Filing Architecture • ECF 3.0 provides the means to generate end-to-end benefits for the e-filer. • E-filed information and documents move through an electronic service • provider to the court’s CMS (Case Management System) and DMS (Document Management System), and information (e.g., whether the e-filing was successful or failed) flows back to the filer. • The real savings that relieve court workloads comes from integrating the e-filing system with the Court’s case and document management systems..

8. www.oasis-open.org History of E-Filing Specifications • In 1999, the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) of COSCA and NACM chose the Legal XML organization to be its technical drafting committee for XML standards supporting electronic filing. • In 2000 and 2002, the JTC adopted as proposed standards the Electronic Court Filing (ECF) 1.0 and 1.1 specifications and the Query and Response specification developed by Legal XML. • These standards are in use today. Vendors have used them as the foundations for their electronic filing products. Individual court and state judiciary electronic filing implementations have also used them. • In 2001 Legal XML became the LegalXML Member Section of OASIS and its ECFTC assumed responsibility for developing future versions of XML electronic filing technical specifications.

9. Who developed these standards? • OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is the standards-development group where the: • The LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee developed “Electronic Court Filing 3.0” (ECF 3.0) as a specification for court e-filing systems. • ECF 3.0, when approved by the boards of COSCA (Council of State Court Administrators) and NACM (National Association for Court Management), will become a “recommended standard” for court e-filing systems. • ECF 3.0 conforms with another important standard: the law, safety, and justice vocabulary of XML “data elements” in the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) • This ensures that the same XML markup tags are used for the same things in court e-filing. • Thus, e-filing transaction messages, document “meta-data,” and marked-up document content are all using the same “language.”

10. www.oasis-open.org ECF3.0 supports these business needs (p. 1 of 3) • Courts that can receive documents electronically are able to improve document management and access while reducing data entry. • ECF 3.0 covers e-filing documents when initiating a new case ande-filing documents in an existing case. • It also addresses e-filing documents for an existing case from law firms and other filers to a court for entry into the court’s official case record. • ECF 3.0 includes support for common data, court-specific data, and unique data associated with the following kinds of court cases: • * Civil (including general civil, mental health, probate and conservatorship, and small claims) • * Criminal, both Misdemeanor and Felony • * Domestic Relations (including divorce, separation, custody and support, domestic violence, and paternity) • * Juvenile (delinquency and dependency) • * Traffic Citations, and • * Bankruptcy.

11. www.oasis-open.org ECF3.0 supports these business needs (p. 2 of 3) • Courts need to e-file (e.g. orders) and court clerks need to e-file (e.g., notices). ECF 3.0 supports their e-filing of documents for processing into the court record. • Courts with e-filing need to provide for electronic online fee payments. ECF 3.0 allows for the financial transactions necessary for accepting filing fees, fines, and other financial obligations paid online. • Clerks must review filings before entering them on the docket (or register of actions) and placing them into the case files. ECF 3.0 provides for a clerk’s filing review workflow steps, including the actions that integrate e-filings with the court’s Case Management System (CMS) and Document Management System (DMS).

12. www.oasis-open.org ECF3.0 supports these business needs (p. 3 of 3) • ECF 3.0 provides for filers sending electronic queries to receive a specific court’s policies (requirements) related to electronic filing. • ECF 3.0 supports notices to the e-filer that the e-filing was received, along with notices the e-filing has been entered into the case record; it also provides for ways to check the status of an e-filed document. • ECF 3.0 allows for electronic service upon attorneys and parties in a case. • ECF 3.0 does not support “initial service,” sometimes called “service of process,” involving documents that establish a court’s jurisdiction over the parties to a newly opened case. • ECF 3.0, however, does not require a court to support electronic service if it does not choose to do so. • ECF 3.0 includes actions taken to grant or restrict access to court records (e.g., case calendars, registers of action, and e-filed documents). • ECF 3.0 incorporates advanced technology to secure document and message transmissions, authentication, integrity, and security.

13. Benefits from Adopting ECF 3.0 • Leverage “Best-in-Class” concepts • Ensure interoperability with other e-filing systems • Find support for development using a scalable approach • Contribute to the ongoing improvement of the standard

14. www.oasis-open.org Where is ECF 3.0 going? • By November 15, 2005, the ECFTC approved the ECF 3.0 specification as an OASIS Committee Draft and began the approval process by submitting the specification to the JTC for consideration as a proposed standard. • The JTC’s adoption of the ECF 3.0 specification as a proposed standard has launched a period of implementation and testing. • ECF 3.0 is undergoing experimental implementation in actual courts, to test transactions between those courts and e-filing vendors to validate that there is “interoperability.” • In time, there will be enhanced support for e-filings with appellate courts and administrative tribunals; there will be support for e-filings in additional case categories listed in the NCSC State Court Guide to Statistical Reporting, such as civil traffic, parking, and local ordinance violations.

15. www.oasis-open.org Where is ECF 3.0 going? • ECFTC hopes to develop a means for electronic service of process, which involves the delivery of documents such as summonses, subpoenas, and warrants that establish a court’s jurisdiction over the parties to a case. • Also needed is support for non-case-related e-filings of matters submitted to the court clerk’s office, such as applications for notaries, requests for bonding authorities and for establishing bond limits, and licenses. • The ECF 3.0 specification may be considered for expansion to cover other non-case filings submitted to clerks of court, such as deeds, mortgages, liens and other real property instruments, security instruments, and liens on personal property. • The ECF must support future releases of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and GJXDM (Global Justice XML Data Model).

16. Review • ECF 3.0 will benefit courts that have e-filing • ECF is ready for deployment now • Support can be requested (through LegalXML and OASIS) for help with adopting the recommended standards • Ongoing work by the ECFTC will continue to add functions and capabilities to the specification

18. Case Study 1 Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County • Our First E-Filing Experience • Complex Civil Litigation Pilot Project • Contracted Vendor LexisNexis® File & Serve • Mandatory E-Filing for Complex Cases • Attorneys use vendor to E-File, clerk staff use vendor system to review filings, and Judges and judicial staff use vendor system to review and rule on filings. • Lessons Learned • Services vendors offer the legal community are essential • 24 / 7 phone and email support offered by vendors is essential • The Court discovered it did not want to force our customers to use a prescribed e-filing system • The Court wanted more flexibility to manage and improve the functionality of Clerk Review and Judge Review, to more tightly integrate them with our case and document management systems.

19. Case Study 1 (cont) Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County • As a result of this pilot, and the lessons learned, we concluded we would like to pursue a multi-vendor e-filing model. • What are the next steps? • Create our own E-Filing Manager (Clerk Review and Judge Review). • Tightly integrate our EFM with case and document management systems. • Select e-filing vendors. • Work with e-filing vendors to integrate their systems with the Court’s Electronic Filing Management (EFM) system.

20. Case Study 1 (cont) Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County • Challenge: How do we integrate vastly different vendor e-filing systems with the Court’s EFM? • Answer: Adopt ECF 3.0 Standards • Why? • ECF allows the Court to provide and manage a ‘single’ method to accept filings from multiple entities. • ECF allows the Court to use standard technologies already adopted within the justice community (i.e., XML and Web Services) • ECF allows the Court to develop and publish complete and detailed integration specifications for vendors to utilize for integration with our EFM. • ECF allows the Court to easily expand e-filing efforts and integrate in a standard way with other Courts or Government agencies. • The future may even allow for sophisticated law firms to act as their own E-Filing vendors, integrating directly with the Court.

21. Case Study 1 (cont) Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County

22. Questions? Getting the E-Filing Specification (ECF 3.0): http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=legalxml-courtfiling Contacting the Committee: Thomas Clarke, tclarke@ncsc.dni.us, ChairJohn Greacen, john@greacen.net, Chair Thanks to the many contributors to the standard!