"I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a federal complaint using stone knives and bearskins."

[captainsblog]

Okay, I admit it. I'm a spoiled Bankruptcy Court practice brat.

I had to file a case today in the federal court which, technically, sits above and procedurally includes the Bankruptcy Court. Both courts have mandatory "electronic filing" of documents, in which we provide .pdf copies of the papers and enter them on the court docket ourselves. Here's how I do it in BK Court, here and in every other one I practice in:

(1) Write or otherwise prepare the document, usually in Word, sometimes using specific software.
(2) Print an original, saving it as a .pdf in an easy-to-remember place on computer.
(3) Using the ordinary internet and a court-assigned account, login and file the document from my office, which automatically constitutes the filing and enters it on the docket. Obtain case number if it's an initiating event, which prints directly on the filing receipt.
(4) If a fee is involved, open the pay-dot-gov site and have it charged to a debit card.  Proof appears instantly on printable payment receipt.
(5) File away the filing and any payment receipt. 
(6) Finally, send any extra paper copies needed to the judge or other party who might want or be entitled to it.

Steps 1 and 6: variable, but the same as you're about to run into below. Steps 2 through 5, though: usually, about 10 minutes.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Yet here's how the "higher" federal court wants it done when you want to initiate a case:
(1) Write the document the same as above.
(2) Print an original, also saving it as a .pdf, but save it to one of these!-


(2a) Dig around for half an hour finding your external floppy drive. (Yes, they also take CD's now, but I find that their many different plus/dash/R/RW formats aren't as friendly for "sneakernetting" and floppies are, frankly, more universally accepted on the receiving end.)

(2b) Dig even further to find a floppy- in this case, disk 22 of a 26-disk backup of an old computer I did in, probably, 1996 or something. Erase it.

(3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 to generate the "case cover sheet," a file-initiating document that is handled in higher versions by data entries directly into the docket and/or through software-generated text files that automatically fill in those blanks.

(4) Drive the 12 miles into downtown B-lo, pay to park, clear security.

(5) Hand the clerk the original and the floppy. Make no jokes about how antiquated this all is. Hell, at least they're not using mimeographs.

(6) Wait for the inevitable nitpick about something or other. Cope.

(7) Get your case number, which I swear is still produced by one of those consecutive-number rubber-stamp thingies, and head down the hall to pay.

(8) Pay. With a paper check. Wait longer for the receipt than it takes to file the whole damn case elsewhere.

(9) Return the payment receipt to the first counter and get your time-stamped copies. Be told that, no, summonses aren't electronically generated in this court, either, which means either filling one out online or finding a typewriter.

(10) Once that last part is figured out, send any extra paper copies needed to the judge or other party who might want or be entitled to it.

First and last steps: same as the first court. The middle 10 minutes, though? Two hours and counting.

I first encountered this a couple of years ago when a client insisted that I use federal court for a lawsuit just because I could. Its filing fees were no lower, its wait times no shorter, but hey, who am I to argue? I'm just a potted plant, after all.

----

I'd like to think that this sort of crap is more typical among lawyers, being a stuffy old conservative profession that resists change. I would be wrong, though.

We got talking earlier today about Joshilyn Jackson, one of our favorite authors and funniest bloggers on both of our lists. Her most recent post, about organic mac and cheese, is a hoot at first, but it eventually got us talking about how rather sad it is that she's been suckered into the whole "it's organic so it must be good" scam. That then got us back to a previous one- a post she did about Vanity Fair magazine setting up Joss, and a bunch of other southern fiction authoresses, in a story about the "Lady Writers of Atlanta"  which appeared in their February issue.

Now most of this writing crew would be out of place at a runway event. They're smart, independent, no-nonsense people in both their writing and their lives. Yet somehow they got schmoozed into doing a full-blown photo shoot, which they wound up all dolled up in ridiculous outfits, including, in Joss's case at least, in what she describes as "transmission-n-tires priced pink satin slingback platforms with SIX INCH SPIKES ON THE BACK, so of course I instantly sunk all the way up to my heels in black mud. It was like I had been NAILED to the lawn by my shoes!"

She winds up making light of it, and asserting that that's not who she is, but yet isn't she, at least a little? And worse, isn't her daughter now being told that it's okay for the fashion industry (read: men) to make a 40-something successful career woman play Dress-Up if she wants to get marketed?

It carries on into the writing itself- maybe not theirs, but plenty of contemporary fiction. I finally conquered the Sherlockian book that I had to wait for, get, lose, pay for, find, get refunded for, order and wait for before finally getting. It's well done overall, even if requiring more suspension of disbelief than I normally care for, but honest to shit, the 28-year old guy who wrote it (last year) can't get through a scene with a contemporary woman without describing her outfit right down to the color and heel height of her shoes. Do the men in the story get this treatment? What do you think?

Sadly, we made fun of this double standard close to forty years ago, and it's still with us:









Sorry about cutting off the edges of that. I'm sure you're all dying to know how high the heels were on Nichole's boots ::headdesk::

Comments

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Yikes, what an involved and antiquated and wholly unnecessary filing process!

I once read a reporter the riot act for opening his profile of Ruth Bader Ginsberg's speech by describing her hair and outfit.

That said, there is a long history of describing women based on their sartorial choices, and that is hard to avoid in fiction. I don't think it's necessarily degrading - women's fashion is more playful and has more options than men's, so it's more engaging to describe a female character's clothes than a male's.

...and I admit that I would love to be given clothes and told to play dress-up for a fashion shoot. I'm a total fashion geek.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Re: that last part- Yeah, I saw you were posting almost at the same time about resisting the inner Girlygirl today.

You con doo eet.

[nonspecific.livejournal.com]

So wait... what is wrong with the macaroni? Nobody explained that part. I still would rather take the organic one rather than the preservative one.

[plantmom.livejournal.com]

Ah, I can't for sure speak for Ray, but I believe the gist is this: Although Annie's is organic, it's still a box dinner. Meaning that you're paying a whole lot more for it than you need to. You can get perfectly good whole wheat macaroni and some perfectly good cheddar cheese fairly inexpensively. Either way, the instructions on the Annie's box recommend adding butter and milk or yogurt. (This does speak for Ray, because he's writing it: And even so-called "plain yogurt" from the likes of Dannon is actually plain plus a buttload of sugar and preservatives.) So ultimately, you're getting whole wheat macaroni and powdered cheese in a box with a really cute graphic and not much else.
"Organic" BTW, does not necessarily mean preservative-free. Annie's has sodium phosphate. On the other hand, it has no dyes or artificial coloring, unlike the mainstream competition. Personally, I don't care for mac-n-cheese made with powdered cheese which looks like it could glow in the dark. :-O

[nonspecific.livejournal.com]

You are right about that, but I'm guilty of grabbing some of the trader joe's boxed mac n' cheese every now and then. And even occasionally some Wal-mart brand. I did notice that they came out with a "Healthy Whole Wheat" boxed mac recently. When checking the ingredients and nutrition info, the wal-mart "unhealthy" brand was still healthier...
And the yogurt thing, I've definitely ranted about that before. Dannon's excuse for Greek yogurt is ridiculous, especially. Real Greek yogurt = milk, cultures, the end. Dannon includes all sorts of non-food ingredients in theirs. >:(

[plantmom.livejournal.com]

I am so thankful for Farmers & Artisans, for turning me on to all sorts of things which are made simply and well.

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Is that at the WDNY? That's bananas.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but don't get too smug about how everything's up to date where you are.

As with here, Northern District and Northern BK have separate filing systems- but admission is to District only. I've been admitted since 1987, but have never had to file anything in the District Court- ever. So I never registered for ECF there.

Last year sometime, the Bankruptcy Court sent a nice email out saying that everyone was about to be disbarred from the District rolls if not current on their biennial District registration fees. Which nobody had ever sent me a notice of, and which the BK court had never once mentioned until then. I called and found out it had to be done online using your District Court bar roll number. Ha! WHAT District Court bar roll number? I was so far back they used hieroglyphs.

Ultimately, they assigned me (and numerous other panicked people) a new one, and even waived my past years of misbehavior in exchange for the one biennial payment.

(Oh, and I checked- Northern is pretty wonky, too, at initiating cases on the district court system- you have to get pretty deep into the documentation to find how to do it, involving entering a dummy case number, clicking your heels together three times and saying "there's no federal jurisdiction like Erie RR v. Tompkins...."