Here are the winners and honorable mentions of the 2011 State Bar of Texas Appellate Section Twitter Brief Competition. Hat tip to Twitterer @DToddSmith!

I attended a webinar sponsored by CaseFile Xpress today. It discussed the new e-filing rules going into effect on Monday, September 12, 2011.

Here is the new rule regarding e-filing in the Texas Supreme Court (link to PDF of the order and rules), which takes effect on Monday, September 12, 2011:

http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/miscdocket/11/11915200.pdf

Points to remember:

1. e-FILING is mandatory in the Texas Supreme Court; e-SERVICE is not.

2. When an attorney signs up with CaseFile Xpress, he/she is not automatically opted in to receive notifications regarding efilings. One must actively opt in to receive notifications of filings.

3. Tex. R. App. P. (TRAP) 9.5 makes it MANDATORY that service is perfected the SAME day the document is filed with the Tex. Sup. Ct. This can be done via CaseFile Xpress for anyone on the service list who is already signed up to use CaseFile Xpress OR who has an email address. OR CaseFile Xpress can serve by fax ($2 minimum and $0.25/page) anyone on the service list who does NOT have an email address. OR the attorney serving the pleadings can manually serve by fax, email, mail or courier.

4. The more the merrier. There is a flat fee of $8 to serve anyone on the service list. So whether there is one person or 100 people, you will only be charged $8.

5. It is prudent at the beginning of a case for the attorney to gather all involved counsel’s email addresses and encourage them all to use CaseFile Xpress for ease of service and economy, especially where there are many parties and counsel involved.

6. Redaction. This is the most important part of the webinar, in my opinion. According to the new order, effective September 12, 2011:

“4. Redaction of information in e-filed document. “(a) Unless the Court orders otherwise, an e-filed document must not contain a social security number; a birth date; a home address; the name of any person who was a minor when the underlying suit was filed; a driver’s license number, passport number, tax identification number, or similar government-issued personal identification number; or a bank account number, credit card number, or other financial account number. The e-filer must redact all of this information in accordance with the redaction guidelines posted by the Court’s Clerk on the Court’s website; however, the e-filed document may contain a reference to this information as long as the reference does not include any part of the actual information (e.g., “passport number”). For good cause, the Court may order redaction of additional information.”

CaseFile Xpress recommends altering a COPY of the original Word (or WordPerfect) document and redacting the data by overwriting it with @@@@@@ or some other and NOT just taking a black magic marker to it and scanning it up to PDF. (Because mere scanning a page to PDF does NOT create a text-searchable PDF which is MANDATORY as of September 12, and failure to provide such a text-searchable PDF will cause the Court to REJECT your filing altogether.

7. Attachment limitation is a generous 30MB, which is approximately 4-5 reams of paper or 2000-2500 sheets.

8. The number one all time reason for filings being rejected by the Texas Supreme Court is that they are not made text-searchable.

9. Signatures. Signatures must be conformed on e-filed documents as follows:

/s/ Jane Doe
____________________
JANE DOE

OR you can scan an image of a live signature and attach it.

For signatures of OTHER or especially OPPOSING parties on a document, it apparently is NOT sufficient to use the first method above; e.g.,

/s/ JOHN SMITH by permission JANE DOE
____________________
JOHN SMITH

You MUST have a live signature, scan the live signature to PDF, OCR it so the text is searchable, AND retain a copy of the page containing the live signature.

10. Paper Copies and Filing. This is the second most important takeaway from this webinar. e-Filing does not remove the requirement for filing of paper copies. Per the new order:

“8. Paper copies. “(a) One paper copy of a record in an original proceeding, two paper copies of petitions, responses, replies, and amicus briefs, and four copies of any brief on the merits must be filed within three business day after the document is e-filed. “(b) All paper copies must comply with Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 9 and must be the printed version of the e-filed document bearing the electronic file stamp.”