electronic Filing & Service for Courts

West Virginia: Supreme Court Clerk Rory Perry

A weblog about information issues in the courts, with occassional diversions, authored by the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Rory Perry.

This weblog and its various categories primarily examine the interplay between law, technology, and the courts. Which also sometimes means delving into knowledge management, methods for troubleshooting these micropublishing tools, and other bits of arcana.

"In my capacity as Clerk of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, I deal with the connections between law, technology and the courts on a daily basis. Because a central function of a court clerk is to preserve court records and disseminate public information about the courts and court proceedings, I use this site to pass along relevant news and information about court technology efforts with a wider community. I've been involved in a variety of technology initiatives since joining the court, including: selecting, installing, configuring, and administering a new case management system for the Court; creating an innovative inter-agency electronic document exchange program, which was featured at the 2001 CTC7; creating and maintaining a free listserv that distributes topical summaries of all opinions, rules, and significant case developments; and participating in electronic filing standards development through observing the progress of LegalXML workgroups" - Rory Perry

Florida: About eFiling "It is going to be our ultimate savior"

From the Tampa Tribune, January 16, 2005

Richard Ake has one of the best-known names in Hillsborough County. Yet he kept such a low profile during his 20 years as clerk of the court that few people recognize him on the street.

Q. Why does everybody in Hillsborough know your name?

A. See I'm not only clerk of the court; I'm the county recorder too. So if you bought a home recently or refinanced, every legal document that you recorded through the official record came back with my name on top of it.

Q. As you leave office and look back, what's one thing that you didn't get done?

A. Telephone system. I changed it three times, improved it three times, and it got worse every time. The improvements that we made to it were not equal to the increased demand that was made on it. Still isn't.

Q. How has the access of electronic records changed the nature of your department's work?
A. Not nearly as much as it will. It is going to be our ultimate savior. Most of the complaints we get will go away when we truly have electronic filing and we truly have a paperless court system.

Q. Is it different dealing with the judiciary than dealing with the county commission?

A. My primary dealings with the judiciary are with the chief judge and the administrative judges. I don't really deal on a day-to-day basis with the individual judges. ... The commission is a lot different in the sense that I don't interface with the commissioners directly unless they're mad at the administrator. I am a great barometer of when an administrator is about to leave town, because when I become the board's best friend, that means he's got big problems because otherwise they would much rather work through him.