Presently, Indiana Administrative Rule (AR) 16 charges the Division of State Court Administration with reviewing and approving local rules for pilot electronic filing (e-filing) projects that meet a laundry list of specific factors listed in that rule. Such local e-filing pilot projects exist in Marion County, with Lexis-Nexus as the vendor, and in Lake County, as part of the county’s homegrown system developed by another vendor.
As more and more counties and the Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC) explore e-filing, it has become apparent that the AR 16 pilot project process is too limited and that Indiana needs to start looking at comprehensive rule changes that would enable e-filing in all of our courts. With the approval of Chief Justice Brent Dickson, the Division of State Court Administration has convened a temporary, advisory committee to study and recommend rules that would enable all Indiana courts to initiate e-filing.
The federal court system and many state court systems have already gone through this process, so that there are many e-filing rule packages that Indiana could use as models.
The tasks for the our advisory committee are:
- to decide what Indiana needs to do in order to enable e-filing and e-service in all our courts;
- to examine the e-filing rules in other states and federal system;
- to see if Indiana could borrow from other successful practices; and
- to produce a product of conceptual or exact language for rule amendments.
The e-filing committee will submit the final product to the Supreme Court Rules Committee for its review, publication for public comment, and presentment to the Supreme Court.
The advisory e-filing committee consists of appellate and trial judges, court clerks, court administrators, and the practicing bar. It is staffed by the Division of State Court Administration. The committee will be meeting monthly until the tasks set out before them are complete. Once the recommendations have been forwarded to the Rules Committee, this temporary advisory committee will be disbanded.