CLERKS SAY STANDARDIZING DOCUMENT TITLES COULD STREAMLINE E-FILING

Florida’s county court clerks say standardizing document titles could make it easier for judges to identify filings and reduce filing errors across the state’s patchwork of county courts, according to a recent episode of the Clerk Talk podcast.

“I would love to see lawyers use the same document titles for the various documents,” says Karen Rushing, Sarasota County clerk and comptroller. She adds that such standardization has been done throughout the country.

The Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, which attorneys use to file court cases, manages more than 2.6 million documents each month, according to Melissa Bennefield, who oversees the portal as Florida Court Clerks & Comptrollers chief operating officer. Judges, represented litigants, and state agencies also use the portal.

Rushing says clerks are still spending a lot of time making sure those documents get in the correct file because of the lack of consistency in document names among Florida’s 67 counties.

Standardizing document titles may be a high-impact change that could streamline online filing of court documents and improve overall system functioning.

Rushing, who has been Sarasota’s clerk for 39 years, explained that when courts were building their online systems, each county was responsible for standing up its own website. As a result, each county used local document titles, which can vary widely.

The portal, which was rolled out in 2013, unifies the county sites and serves as a “front door” to each county’s online system.

Bennefield says the focus is now on “continuously improving the portal — making it easier to use, increasing automation, strengthening its security, and making sure that it's in a good place to meet the evolving needs of Florida courts for years to come.”

Standardizing document titles would allow the system to automate online filing with greater accuracy using AI to help with document processing, says Bennefield.

Right now, it’s largely a manual process, according to Rushing.

As part of that effort, Bennefield says a major project is currently underway to develop standard document descriptions. Her team is also exploring how AI could potentially help with document processing, quality checks, and workflow management, freeing clerks’ staff from repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on work that requires human judgment.

Technology is increasingly becoming a challenge, says Bennefield, because of cybersecurity and user expectations. She notes that although the portal started as a technology project, it has now grown to become “part of the infrastructure that keeps courts running.”

“Besides filing them in the court file through the docketing process, we are obligated to do things with these documents — whether it's copy someone, whether it's forward it to the sheriff's office, maybe it's distributing money, maybe it's to recall a warrant,” says Rushing.

“Those kinds of things are decision-making points. We'll be looking at the intelligence of these applications to see if [AI] can make the decisions, [and] spit out the exceptions,” she says.

Rushing, who also serves as a member of the Florida Courts Technology Commission, says as the portal evolves, the Florida Courts E-Filing Authority, which governs the portal, constantly weighs funding demands, seeking to “support this system as it grows and becomes more useful to all of the justice partners without significant support.”

The system has grown from 55,000 users in 2013 to more than a million users as of June, according to Bennefield. Funding for system maintenance comes from the statutory convenience fee for electronic payment added to the statutory filing fee; there is no user fee.

The Clerk Talk podcast is presented by Florida Court Clerks & Comptrollers, a statewide nonprofit member association composed of Florida’s elected circuit court clerks and county comptrollers.

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