Let's Face It, Court Filing Is A Mess... These Folks Can Help You Navigate It With Ease

Every court has its own quirks -- ALN's new filing portal keeps you ahead of it all.

As a true refugee of New York’s Biglaw culture, I never really had to worry much about filing. The firm maintained a whole office of trained clerks capable of matching anything I handed them to the appropriate rules and regulations of whatever jurisdiction my clients found themselves in. Not to begrudge those folks their jobs, but shouldn’t it be a bit more of a scandal that courts vary so wildly in their procedures that it takes a whole team of professionals just to stay on top of it?

American LegalNet has been in the docketing game for a while now, but yesterday, the company unveiled its latest offering to bring the whole eFiling workflow under one suite and looks to be a huge boon for firms trying to keep themselves above water when it comes to filing in this crazy, mixed-up, bureaucratic world.

Califorina’s courts receive roughly 30 million documents a year. Of that, around 5 million are in the LA courts. Yet the system suffers around a 10 percent rejection rate, meaning there’s a staggering 3 million documents kicked back for failing to comply with some arcane requirement every year. And while that’s an absurd number, it’s really to be expected when we live in a world where there’s no standardization of eFiling protocols.

That’s why ALN’s new offering, eFiling Portal, will go live first in Los Angeles and Orange County, branching out to other the rest of California and other jurisdictions in due course. (Illinois and Texas expected to be available before the end of the year and 14 more states set to join next year.)

But just what does the system offer? In a nutshell, end-to-end filing. It’s a product that, in many ways, only ALN could design given the wealth of data it has at its disposal from its years in the industry and its client base of over half the Am Law 100 that uniquely allows it to identify rejection issues and firm pain points.

To start with, the system offers enterprise-level password management. No longer are filings dependent on attorneys maintaining their own, idiosyncratic eFiling logins. The firm will maintain a master login that it can issue individual passwords through. Documents can be set up to file through a simple drag-and-drop interface and will be automatically converted from any input standard to the court’s mandated filing standard. The system will even flag documents that exceed mandated limits.

Though perhaps the strongest features of ALN’s new offering come on the back-end where filings are seamlessly integrated into the firm’s document management system — with built-in iManage and NetDocuments compatibility and the ability to custom-build a connection to alternative offerings — and Office365 integration for calendaring and updates. If the watch word of the legal tech industry these days is “single-pane,” ALN is offering a docketing system that allows users to leverage all their productivity software without leaving its user interface.

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Add in concierge service until midnight to assist users in filing anywhere.

When I spoke with ALN’s Erez Bustan, he told me that the company expects this product to reduce the 10 percent rejection rate down to 2-4 percent at launch, with even more improvement naturally following through increased use. Consider improving filing success five-fold out of the gate.


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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