Texas Supreme Court advisory

Contact: Osler McCarthy, staff attorney for public information
512.463.1441 or click for email

For Thursday, December 8, 2011
COURT E-FILING HEARING TO EXPLORE
SCOPE OF ELECTRONIC FILING IN TEXAS

The Texas Supreme Court will explore the feasibility of a statewide uniform system for electronic court filings in a hearing at 2 p.m. Thursday in the Supreme Court Courtroom.

“We as a court need to determine whether the public and the bar would benefit from a statewide system to handle efiling court documents, both from the standpoint of convenience, cost and access,” said Justice Paul W. Green, the Court’s liaison to the Judicial Committee on Information Technology. “On one hand, we know individual counties might prefer to implement their own systems. On the other we have the federal PACER system as a model to allow access to federal court records.”

PACER stands for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, an enrollment system that provides fee-based access to federal district, appellate and bankruptcy records.

According to the October 18 order that set the hearing: “But the method by which court documents are filed is not the end of the inquiry. The Court must also determine whether parties, the public, and practicing attorneys alike would benefit from a statewide PACER-type system, which would allow users to access court documents via a centralized service once they have been e-filed.”

The chair of the Judicial Committee on Information Technology, Justice Rebecca Simmons of the San Antonio Court of Appeals, will address the Court with an overview.

Link for live video webcast courtesy of St. Mary’s University School of Law.