Illinois Supreme Court Clerk's Office to Make E-Filing Switch on June 15
The Illinois Supreme Court Clerk's Office will join the eFileIL community on Thursday, June 15. Filers for the state's highest court will need to access the eFileIL filing platform at efile.illinoiscourts.gov and become a registered user through one of the authorized service providers. Supreme Court filers will no longer be able to use the i2File platform as of 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, June 14.
On January 22, 2016, the Illinois Supreme Court entered Order M.R. 18368 announcing mandatory e-filing for civil cases in the Illinois Supreme, Appellate and Circuit Courts. Consistent with the amendment to this order, entered on May 30, 2017, permissive e-filing may continue in people cases on the Supreme Court's general docket and all cases on the Court's miscellaneous record ("MR") docket. The Supreme Court Order requires e-filing through a single, centralized electronic filing manager (EFM), which will be integrated with each court's case management system. The supreme and appellate courts have a July 1, 2017, deadline to join eFileIL. The Second Appellate District became the first reviewing court to join on May 18.
The Supreme Court Clerk's Office has been e-filing since 2012 on a pilot basis that was expanded to all cases in 2013. In 2016, approximately 48 percent of pleadings filed on the Court's general docket were e-filed and approximately 75 percent of the pleadings on the MR dockets were e-filed.
For more information on the mechanics of e-filing in the supreme court, see the court's Electronic Filing Procedures and User Manual.
Member Comments (1)
This approach strikes me as incredibly backwards. In my opinion, the Illinois Supreme Court should first mandate one uniform set of court documents for the entire state and strike down all local rules. With the current multiple county court forms, e-filing may be different for different counties.
I am also a CPA. I cannot imagine how the Illinois Department of Revenue would function if each county was allowed to issue its own set of tax forms and issue their own set of local rules. Yet each Illinois county court system is allowed to do just that.
Sometimes a downstate attorney will say to me “We do things different down here”. This irritates me for a couple of reasons. First, it is the same state law so you should be doing things the same way wherever you are in the state. Second, the attorney is often correct.
What the Supreme Court is trying to do is add a 21st century engine to a 19th century court system. It is not feasible. It is inefficient. It allows procedural errors to creep into the law because the court forms and law are not the same among the counties.
Please suspend e-filing until you have uniform forms and court procedures throughout the state.