Summati
THE
n Weekly USPS Publication Number 16300
T h i s C o m mu n i t y N ew s p a p e r is a publication of Escambia / Santa Rosa Bar Association
Section A, Page 1
Vol. 16, No. 39
Visit The Summation Weekly Online: www.summationweekly.com
October 5, 2016
1 Section, 8 Pages
TECHNOLOGY IN THE COURTHOUSES
By Susan A. Woolf, General Counsel, on behalf of Pam Childers, Escambia County Clerk of Technology has taken the organize the documents in the of the ability of clerk personnel Escambia County courthouses manner that suits each judge; to access criminal division by storm over the last several create electronic notes for their records on the computer years! The judiciary, Clerk, own purposes within cases without the necessity of having and various judicial partners and on pleadings; create or access to the paper file. With have installed new software, review and electronically sign electronic files, personnel can updated and revised processes, judgments and orders; and review a defendant’s case(s) and approached their daily e-file and e-serve documents on regardless of whether the case operations in new ways with the parties through the portal. is in criminal traffic, county the advent of electronic filing It is anticipated that all judges, criminal or circuit criminal. and paperless recordkeeping. magistrates and hearing officers Accordingly, a deputy clerk can Effective July 1, 2009, as and their staffs in Escambia answer questions a defendant originally enacted, §28.22205 County will be utilizing may have about any of his or mandated: SmartBench by the date of her cases, as well as establish Each clerk of court shall publication of this article. In a single case payment plan or implement an electronic filing July 2016, Chief Judge Linda stacked payment plan involving process. . . . The Legislature Nobles gave permission to the all of the defendant’s cases. requests that, no later than Clerk to cease printing and The Clerk’s office in Century July 1, 2009, the Supreme creating paper court files for all has benefitted greatly from Court set statewide standards county court cases. The Clerk’s electronic court records in for electronic filing to be office hopes to end the practice several respects. Personnel in used by the clerks of court to of creating paper court files in Century provide backup for implement electronic filing. . . circuit court no later than the telephone calls to the Clerk’s The clerks of court shall begin end of September 2016–three Traffic division in Pensacola implementation no later than years after e-filing became and are able to provide October 1, 2009. mandatory. This milestone will customer assistance because The statute required Clerks be enormous for the Clerk in they can view the court records that failed to implement e-filing terms of costs and efficiencies on the computer. They are able by March 1, 2010 to report what insofar as the Clerk has been to provide other “long distance” additional steps had to be taken printing, punching holes in, assistance to customers calling to complete implementation. In and filing every document filed our Pensacola office by accordance with the legislative through the portal for over the processing payments over the mandate, on July 1, 2009, the past three years in order to phone and conducting record Florida Supreme Court issued create paper files in addition searches. Court Administration AOSC 09-30, which created the to maintaining the digital court has established video court for e-portal and defined e-filing. files. Century so that individuals In May 2010, the Florida The portal requires filers in the north end of the county Supreme Court approved to pay fees when filing can attend certain court events e-filing of documents in certain documents, such as a in Century while the judge probate cases in Escambia complaint, counterclaim, or a and other court personnel are County. Later that same year, motion that reopens a case. In in Pensacola for the event. Escambia was approved by addition to the filing fees, the This process allows north-end the Florida Supreme Court to portal charges a convenience residents to avoid the long accept e-filing of court records fee of 3.5 percent on credit and time-consuming trip to in all other case types. As the card payments and a flat fee of Pensacola, which is made more demands for a more robust $5 on ACH payments. These difficult for those who do not software system became clearer, amounts reflect increases that have reliable transportation. the Clerk’s office purchased went into effect on July 1. The Likewise, it saves time for the its current case maintenance purpose of the portal fees is judges and court personnel who system, Benchmark. The Clerk to pay part of the costs for the historically have travelled to completed its transition from maintenance of the portal and Century for those court events. Courtview to Benchmark and the portal customer service Other clerk processes have went live with Benchmark in staff. changed due to, at least in part, December 2012. Effective July 26, 2016, the transition to electronic Attorneys throughout the Clerk implemented the court records. For example, Florida began voluntarily technology necessary to provide clerk personnel in Probate no e-filing through the portal, with images of court records on longer complete checklists e-filing by attorneys becoming the Clerk’s website for review for the judiciary and attorneys mandatory in 2013 for all case by the public. The Escambia concerning the progress and types. E-service through the Clerk’s column in the fall 2016 status of a case. Historically, portal followed soon thereafter. issue of The Summation further checklists were completed and Further, in 2014, the portal describes and explains this new placed on the left-hand side of was opened to e-filing by pro step in the electronic world of the file. In the electronic world, se individuals and various court records. there is no “left-hand side” partners of the courts. Today, For the legal community, of a file. The Clerk’s office many state and local agencies, electronic court records may be has reviewed every manual pro se parties, bail bond agents, the most visible technological procedure it historically has judges, and other participants in change in the courthouses, but performed in order to convert the court system use the portal technology has allowed other the process to an electronic one for e-filing and e-serving. changes and efficiencies in the where possible. If a process The judiciary began Clerk’s processing of court is not statutorily required by implementation of SmartBench, records. This past June, the the Clerk, then the process is their judicial viewer software, in Clerk moved its Collections eliminated or reassigned. April of this year. SmartBench division to the first floor, sharing The Clerk’s office has allows the judiciary to view space with the Traffic division. worked closely with the the electronic court records; This move was possible because Escambia County Jail to bridge
the Circuit Court & Comptroller
software applications and create an electronic method for determining a defendant’s credit for time served. With increased duties in the courtroom, clerk personnel no longer have the time to manually calculate jail credit. The electronic method is available to the State Attorney’s Office and criminal defense bar, enabling attorneys to know in advance of court how much time a defendant has been incarcerated on a particular case. The Clerk has worked with the Escambia County Community Corrections (Probation) and the Escambia County School District to replace outdated, time-consuming paper processes with faster, more efficient electronic solutions. Information exchange between our agencies now takes minutes whereas past exchanges took hours or days. Community Corrections is in the process of purchasing and implementing new software that will bring much needed automation and electronic recordkeeping to their offices. The Clerk has been collaborating with state and local law enforcement agencies to move towards accepting electronic traffic citations from those agencies. The first phase of the project with the Florida Highway Patrol will eliminate approximately 50 percent of the total number of paper citations received by our office each year. The second phase will eliminate another 48% with the inclusion of the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office and the Pensacola Police Department. The incorporation of e-citations will eliminate a largely manual process of entering data from citations into the Clerk’s case maintenance system, which will largely eliminate errors that come from the inability to decipher an officer’s handwriting (is that an ‘S’ or a ‘5’? an ‘I’ or a ‘1’? and so on) and simple human error that occurs when inputting large amounts of data. Each year, over 54,000 jurors are summoned in Escambia County. This number is roughly one-third of all licensed drivers in the county. The processes of summoning, reporting, checking in, and paying jurors are currently being revised using technology to make the juror experience easier and more responsive. As the implementation and use of technology continues to evolve, attorneys would be well
advised to remain current in the requirements placed on them as filers. The Rules of Judicial Administration, a set of rules that at one time was rather obscure for many practitioners, now contain a plethora of important requirements. Rule 2.525 requires all attorneys to e-file, and attorneys who submit paper filings in lieu of e-filing in circumstances that do not meet one of the exceptions do such at their own peril. A recent ruling from the Fourth District Court of Appeal held that the Clerk does not have to accept paper filings from attorneys who should e-file the pleadings. United Bank v. Estate of Frazee, So. 3d, 2016 WL 3745512 (Fla. 4th DCA July 13, 2016). The Florida Supreme Court is considering a number of changes to the Rules of Judicial Administration, including an overhaul to Rule 2.505 regarding who is an attorney of record. If the proposed rule changes are adopted, then attorneys will be designated as either lead counsel or additional counsel, or an attorney may file for a limited appearance. The proposed revisions to the Rule may require all attorneys, including agency attorneys for the State Attorney’s Office and Public Defender’s Office, to specifically file pleadings announcing the attorney’s appearance in a case on behalf of a party and to obtain a court order to withdraw from representation or substitute counsel. The proposed revisions can be found on the Florida Supreme Court website. One of the biggest questions that has arisen in the legal community during the past three years of electronic court records has been, “When will the courthouses have Wi-Fi?” Rest assured that this question has been heard by the various stakeholders and solutions are being explored. Stay tuned for updates as they become available! The court system has moved relatively quickly from a paper, manually-intensive recordkeeping system to a digital system where efficiencies and cost-savings have been found through technology. The storm created in the transition to electronic files was fierce, but the calm is beginning to settle in. The Clerk will continue to look for ways to enhance our services through the use of the technology.