The Atlanta Lawyer December/January 2020 | Page 18
How E-Filing Fits
into the Law
It Is All About E-filing. What Did You Expect?
T
JENA EMORY
Copeland Stair Kingman & Lovell, LLP
[email protected]
he New
Law
In March
of 2018,
Georgia
passed
t h e
following
l a w
regarding
Superior
mandatory
e-filing
in
and
State
Courts:
On and after January 1, 2019,
except as provided in paragraph
(3) of this subsection, all pleadings
and any other document related
thereto filed by an attorney to
initiate a civil action or in a
civil case in a superior court
shall be filed by electronic
means through the court’s
electronic filing service provider.
O.C.G.A. § 15-6-11 (b)(1).
All the lawyers in Georgia
rejoiced. The days of paper
filing, mailing documents, and calling
to see whether a filing was received were
gone, or at least we thought so. This new
law has been in effect for a year, and this
article will discuss my experiences under it.
18
December/January 2020
Prior to Mandatory E-Filing
I personally have never practiced without
at least some county and federal courts
allowing e-filing of documents. The non-
e-filed counties were always the ones
that got me in trouble with my boss.
I know I am not truly an expert on life
without e-filing, but my general impression
of the experience was that it was one of great
concern. Several steps had to be taken when
a county did not have an e-filing system
in place. First, if a county did not e-file
documents, then you needed to calendar a
date to mail your document in order for it to
reach the court by the legal deadline. Next,
you had to call the court, once you mailed
your document, to confirm that your filing
was timely received. Then, you had to wait
on the file stamped document to be mailed
to your office in a reasonable amount of
time. If one of these things did not happen
properly, then you needed to panic. We all
can agree that this process was not ideal.
When I heard that Georgia was switching
to mandatory e-filing, I was excited.
Some people, however, were concerned
about mandatory e-filing when it first came
about. Many were concerned that it would
limit access to court documents for both
lawyers and pro se litigants. They were
concerned that e-filed documents would
not be available for days. People were also
concerned about the cost of e-filing and the
power to control public information that
would be given to the private e-filing vendors.
I cannot speak to whether all of these fears
have been realized, but I have learned a few
things along my mandatory e-filing journey.
Superior Court
The new mandatory e-filing law only applies
to Superior and State Courts. Once the bill
finally came into effect, clerk’s offices across
the state went into a transition period, which
was to be expected. But even with the law in
full effect, there are still inconsistencies. The
e-filing process is not uniform from county to
county even
for Superior
Courts.
In
addition,
the counties
are
also
issuing their
own e-filing
rules which
can require
additional
payments for
filings longer
than 50 pages
or prohibit proposed orders from being e-filed.
For the attorney regularly practicing in more
than one county, the system is full of pitfalls.
One of my surprises under the new mandatory