Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride announced Thursday a pilot project for the electronic filing of documents with the Illinois Supreme Court.
The specific project approved by the Supreme Court allows the Illinois Attorney General, the State Appellate Defender's Office and the Office of the Illinois State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor to digitally file motions, briefs and related documents with the Clerk of the Court through a secure password system designed and operated by a third-party vendor.
While restricted now to only those offices when they represent parties opposed to each other in the same case, the pilot project is planned to be the basis for a program to be extended to all parties and litigants filing in the Illinois Supreme Court, eventually resulting in the savings of tens of thousands of pages of paper documents.
"This is an important step to get e-filing started in the Illinois Supreme Court," said Chief Justice Kilbride. "This pilot project will test a new e-filing system and give the Court first-hand experience with the benefits e-filing can bring to the judiciary. With it, we hope to build a more efficient way of doing legal business in our state's highest court and extend that benefit to parties, litigants, all courts and taxpayers."
The pilot project is another step in the continuing initiative of Chief Justice Kilbride to move the Illinois court system into the digital age with court efficiencies and related cost savings to users and Illinois taxpayers.