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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Ind. Courts - Still more on: Appellate Clerk's Office now authorized to serve orders, notices and opinions via e-mail [Updated]

Updating this ILB entry from Jan. 5, 2010, quoting a message from Kevin Smith, Clerk of the Appellate Courts, that began:

On October 2, 2009, the Indiana Supreme Court amended Appellate Rule 26 to
require the Clerk to transmit orders, opinions, and notices BY ELECTRONIC
MAIL to all parties represented by attorneys. This amendment becomes
effective January 1, 2010.

and this brief update from Jan. 6th.

The ILB has received a note this morning for an appellate practitioner:

The Appellate Clerk's office is now sending out a separate e-mail FOR EACH PENDING CASE we have, and we have to confirm that our e-mail address works to receive service. For some of us who have quite a few pending cases, this is going to be burdensome to answer each and every one. Imagine the Attorney General, who is on EVERY criminal appeal; he's going to have to respond to each and every e-mail. This seems like a lot of work for no reason.

What's even funnier is that this process is to help the Court move towards electronic filing, theoretically to save the cost of paper and to be more efficient overall. Yet I have learned that each e-mail message and confirmation from the attorney is being printed out and placed in the physical file. So much for being a "green" Court.

ILB thoughts. Several things crossed my mind when I read this note.

• This shouldn't be hard to do! Most of you are familiar with mailing lists that give you the opinion to receive each message as it is sent, which quickly gets tiresome, or receive them all in one long message at the end of the day, to which the recipient can easily respond. Bells and whistles could be added, but the point is there is plenty of code out there that could be quickly accessed to address this need.

• I recalled, and have now retrieved, this ILB entry from Feb. 18, 2009, nearly a year ago, that is headed "Indiana Supreme Court Hires Director of Appellate Court Technology." The ILB has seen nothing since. (Interestingly, the announcement did not indicate whether the new director had any IT experience.)

• At the time, I had hoped the new director would implement improvements, or better still replacement, of the current non-user-friendly appellate docket. Those of you who go though the laborious process of doing lookups on it can attest that nothing has changed. I received this note recently from a reader:

  You can't return to a previous page of litigants when you are searching for a particular case; instead, you have to start all over again and put in the litigant's name. It is pretty frustrating. I thought they might fix that, but I don't see that happening.

All in all, the goal of electronic filing seems a very long way off.

[Updated at 5:26 PM] Another reader writes:

This really ticks me off, as well -- esp. if you get the wrong case for the practitioner or the party the first try. You can't return to a previous page of litigants when you are searching for a particular case; instead, you have to start all over again and put in the litigant's name. It is pretty frustrating. I thought they might fix that, but I don't see that happening.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 13, 2010 11:24 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts