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captainsblogFor most of the past decade, federal courts have required that we file all (sometimes mostly all) of our papers electronically, rather than bringing paper filings to clerks' offices to be time-stamped and circulated. It was promised to be convenient, flexible and PAPERLESS! YAY! (Or mostly not; since federal court systems didn't realize that judges would need to copy the filed documents and didn't increase their budget lines for copy machines and paper, we still need to provide paper copies of just about everything we file.)
Slowly, New York State has been approaching the same end, and today was my official introduction to NYSEF- the Capital District-based system that will be mandatory in some Erie County state cases I file as of July 1st, and in many more of them three months later. They started offering training sessions back in March; they quickly filled up, but today's the date I snagged for a free two-hour training session, which even burned two of the 24 hours of CLE credit I have to accumulate by my birthday in November.
It did not start well. I fell behind early in the morning and, thinking I still had time to grab coffee en route, somehow wound up behind every slowpoke driver in the county, stuck in two separate detours, and finally wound up stuck downtown with no close-by parking, getting me in the door 15 minutes late. Fortunately, that aspect of New York State courts in Buffalo hadn't changed, and they were still on the introductions and "gee whiz wow you'll love this!" PowerPoint slides when I settled into my seat.
I know the main presenter- he was a fellow associate at the Buffalo firm I moved here to join 19 years ago, and he flew the coop not long after I did, becoming law clerk to the chief administrative judge for this district (she also an alum of that firm). I knew things were gonna be skeevy when he described the technical requirements for the system- scanner, word-processing software capable of generating pdfs, a computer with browser. Ah, but which browser? He, um, didn't know much about Firefox versions, and nothing about Chrome, so he suggested we just use Internet Explorer because "it's the most popular."
Uh huh.
They then gave us a free demo of how the filing system works. As with the federal court systems in place in each district and bankruptcy court, there's a "live" database containing the real data and a "training" one you can use to acclimate yourself with fake filings. To make it more fun for this room full of trained professionals, they started with a fact pattern.
This one. Linking to this precise YouTube video:
Yup, nothing like a little copyright infringement to go with your CLE. They then proceeded to walk us through the resulting tort case of Daffy Duck v. Bugs Bunny, showing us how to file Daffy's summons and complaint, how to pay online, when the clerk would advise by email of the assigned case number (answer: not automatically like in federal court but probably within a day or so), and what Bugs's insurance company lawyer would do once His Nibs was properly served and proof of that service filed.
I'd love to show you the actual court documents uploaded to the training database, but I can't. In a triumph of Looneytuneyness, the system allows an attorney to register online for access to the "live" system, giving anyone who has an Attorney Registration Number instant ability to wreak havoc on the servers (turns out, I already have such an account- they started requiring us to pay for our biennial registrations online within the past couple of years, and Firefox, at least, immediately recognized my login attempt and passed through my password). But to register a username and password (the same one won't work) in the meaningless, fake training database? You need to print out a .pdf file containing an application for it; handwrite or typewriter-type your contact information and requested login and password on it (the fields are not fillable online); and mail it to an address in Troy, New York. Where, presumably, Andrew Cuomo's Brother Dominic will eventually get back to you with the information. Maybe by email, but I tend to doubt it.
At one point during the show, they tried to assuage the room full of paranoic lawyers about how secure the system was to protect us from hacking and crashes that might destroy all evidence that we'd filed a case within a statute of limitations. No worries, the trainer told us; between multiple redundancies and frequent backups on the server side, our filings would be "just as secure as the Verizon records."
Barum bum.
So tomorrow I will mail in my training application. Probably attaching forty-six one-cent stamps to the envelope just so Brother D. can get a good idea of my frustration about the whole business. And of course Adobe crashed during one of the demo uploads; and they confirmed that this whole system is separate from, and will not be merged with, the paper-based databases maintained by the county clerk and the Unified Court System that already exist; and the "Erie County Protocols" in addition to the statewide rules have already changed and will probably change at least 20 times before we all get used to this.
And no, fees will not be going down, nor any civil servants relieved of duties, on account of us now doing their jobs. At least they're not charging us to look at copies of our own filings as federal courts do. Yet.
Slowly, New York State has been approaching the same end, and today was my official introduction to NYSEF- the Capital District-based system that will be mandatory in some Erie County state cases I file as of July 1st, and in many more of them three months later. They started offering training sessions back in March; they quickly filled up, but today's the date I snagged for a free two-hour training session, which even burned two of the 24 hours of CLE credit I have to accumulate by my birthday in November.
It did not start well. I fell behind early in the morning and, thinking I still had time to grab coffee en route, somehow wound up behind every slowpoke driver in the county, stuck in two separate detours, and finally wound up stuck downtown with no close-by parking, getting me in the door 15 minutes late. Fortunately, that aspect of New York State courts in Buffalo hadn't changed, and they were still on the introductions and "gee whiz wow you'll love this!" PowerPoint slides when I settled into my seat.
I know the main presenter- he was a fellow associate at the Buffalo firm I moved here to join 19 years ago, and he flew the coop not long after I did, becoming law clerk to the chief administrative judge for this district (she also an alum of that firm). I knew things were gonna be skeevy when he described the technical requirements for the system- scanner, word-processing software capable of generating pdfs, a computer with browser. Ah, but which browser? He, um, didn't know much about Firefox versions, and nothing about Chrome, so he suggested we just use Internet Explorer because "it's the most popular."
Uh huh.
They then gave us a free demo of how the filing system works. As with the federal court systems in place in each district and bankruptcy court, there's a "live" database containing the real data and a "training" one you can use to acclimate yourself with fake filings. To make it more fun for this room full of trained professionals, they started with a fact pattern.
This one. Linking to this precise YouTube video:
Yup, nothing like a little copyright infringement to go with your CLE. They then proceeded to walk us through the resulting tort case of Daffy Duck v. Bugs Bunny, showing us how to file Daffy's summons and complaint, how to pay online, when the clerk would advise by email of the assigned case number (answer: not automatically like in federal court but probably within a day or so), and what Bugs's insurance company lawyer would do once His Nibs was properly served and proof of that service filed.
I'd love to show you the actual court documents uploaded to the training database, but I can't. In a triumph of Looneytuneyness, the system allows an attorney to register online for access to the "live" system, giving anyone who has an Attorney Registration Number instant ability to wreak havoc on the servers (turns out, I already have such an account- they started requiring us to pay for our biennial registrations online within the past couple of years, and Firefox, at least, immediately recognized my login attempt and passed through my password). But to register a username and password (the same one won't work) in the meaningless, fake training database? You need to print out a .pdf file containing an application for it; handwrite or typewriter-type your contact information and requested login and password on it (the fields are not fillable online); and mail it to an address in Troy, New York. Where, presumably, Andrew Cuomo's Brother Dominic will eventually get back to you with the information. Maybe by email, but I tend to doubt it.
At one point during the show, they tried to assuage the room full of paranoic lawyers about how secure the system was to protect us from hacking and crashes that might destroy all evidence that we'd filed a case within a statute of limitations. No worries, the trainer told us; between multiple redundancies and frequent backups on the server side, our filings would be "just as secure as the Verizon records."
Barum bum.
So tomorrow I will mail in my training application. Probably attaching forty-six one-cent stamps to the envelope just so Brother D. can get a good idea of my frustration about the whole business. And of course Adobe crashed during one of the demo uploads; and they confirmed that this whole system is separate from, and will not be merged with, the paper-based databases maintained by the county clerk and the Unified Court System that already exist; and the "Erie County Protocols" in addition to the statewide rules have already changed and will probably change at least 20 times before we all get used to this.
And no, fees will not be going down, nor any civil servants relieved of duties, on account of us now doing their jobs. At least they're not charging us to look at copies of our own filings as federal courts do. Yet.
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no subject
Date: 2013-06-08 12:37 am (UTC)The website doesn't include article 78s yet, so I guess it doesn't matter for us yet. Let me know how incredibly frustrating it gets. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-06-08 12:47 am (UTC)I was on the verge of getting a parking ticket, so I held the question.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-08 12:55 am (UTC)We do 75s occasionally, but the state is pretty good with paying up. The lopez/silver scandal has delayed payment pretty significantly though, as now every settlement or award has to be reviewed by the comptroller, and larger ones can take up to 6 months. Had to file a notice of claim on a settlement I got for a client last year that was in the mid 5 figures. Pain in my butt.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-08 12:45 am (UTC)Welcome to the Wonderful World of Tomorrow!
no subject
Date: 2013-06-08 12:50 am (UTC)In a downstate federal court I filed in just the other day, I saw this cheery announcement on the login screen:
This version of CM/ECF ONLY WORKS WITH Mozilla Firefox 3.5/3.6, and Internet Explorer 7 or 8.
IT WILL NOT WORK WITH CHROME, SAFARI, Internet Explorer 9 or 10, or any newer versions of MOZILLA FIREFOX.
It wound up taking my Firefox 21 (21? REALLY?) filing despite that protest, the only glitch seeming to be that it defaults to searching for .jpeg files rather than .pdfs when you upload your actual document, but I'm used to this particular stone knife in the federal court toolbox by now.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-08 05:33 pm (UTC):/
no subject
Date: 2013-06-09 09:02 pm (UTC)