The Appellate Lawyers Association’s Special Committee on E-Filing issued a report proposing some recommended changes to Illinois reviewing courts' e-filing systems based on feedback from ALA members. The Administrative Office of Illinois Courts (AOIC) and the Clerks of the Illinois Supreme Court and the five Districts of the Illinois Appellate Court have provided a response to the report expressing the courts' appreciation for the ALA's meaningful feedback.
The response also indicates that several changes in line with the ALA's recommendations are in progress or being taken under advisement. For example, the response states that:
- All reviewing courts intend to adopt the Illinois Supreme Court's e-filing manual to establish uniform e-filing standards across every reviewing court in Illinois;
- AOIC and Tyler Technologies are working to develop a method to allow for a window in which rejected e-filings may be corrected and resubmitted;
- ALA members' concerns about unreliable service through the e-filing system were provided to the Illinois Supreme Court's e-Business Policy Advisory Board;
- The Illinois Supreme Court hopes that all non-confidential cases and documents will be available through re:SearchIL by July 1, 2022;
- Filing codes for oral argument acknowledgments, correspondence, and specific brief types were successfully added to the e-filing system;
- AOIC and the clerks of the reviewing courts have submitted a request to Tyler Technologies to have all volumes of a record on appeal transmitted through a link in a single e-mail rather than separate e-mails for each volume; and
- The recommendation for all districts requiring paper copies of briefs to require the same number of copies has been taken under further advisement.
The full response to each of the ALA's recommendations may be found here.
The ALA expresses its gratitude to the Illinois Supreme Court, each of the Districts of the Illinois Appellate Court, their respective clerks, and AOIC for their thoughtful response to its report.
Additionally, the ALA wants to thank its members for their input; the report could not have been possible without them.
