For many, the internet and the digital age was seen as an end to the endless piles of paper that clogs filing cabinets, in-boxes and recycling bins. In reality, both the public and private sector are constantly increasing the amount of hard and digital documents produced, ever increasing the need for a competent and coherent document management system. Electronic document management is widely seen as a way to effectively control this document chaos and provide the necessary digital backbone for collaboration solutions, knowledge management solutions and workflow systems.

Perhaps, the greatest test of any electronic document management system (EDMS) is the nation’s court system. In these situations, any EDMS must be able to provide a scalable, accurate, e-filing ready, easy to use solution with an ability to attract significant external use and most importantly ensure the legal authenticity of each and every document in the system. Since 1990, Image-X and E-filing.com have provided Riverside County with a system that fulfills these criterias.

Riverside County Superior courts represented a unique challenge for E-Filing.com. Riverside’s large population of over 1.3 million and its large geographical area spanning nearly 200 miles from the outskirts of Los Angeles to Palm Springs and north of San Diego, created the need for a system that could not only handle a significant volume of documents but also be able to function over a secure network over a large area. E-filing was able to implement a scalable architecture allowing for simple expansion and integration with existing and future case management systems.

The Riverside court system can be divided into three components: 1. the EDMS system alone, 2. EDMS integrated with the case management system and 3. additional e-filing/management modules.

EDMS with CMS integration

The E-filing EDMS is based around a simple, yet profound indexing system providing the court with a searchable and structured index of documents. Through MINDS (Managed Information Networked Data Services), the E-Filing EDMS system can easily query and index all documents in the system. Instead of simply tagging each document by defendant, case number etc., MINDS tags each document image with a unique index number. This has two benefits. First, by assigning each document image with a number instead of allowing user created tags, redundant image names do not confuse the system. Second, since each document is accurately cataloged by a number, database queries (searches) are simplified.

The Riverside county system is most defined by the close and intimate integration between the EMDS and the case management system. In fact, in stating their decision to choose Image-X, this very fact was highlighted. The case management system, in this case two case management systems, stores the document key. Since, the case management system can directly reference the image number or numbers, the CMS can quickly bring up documents that pertain only to the particular case searched. In fact, the simple act of accessing the case through the CMS will allow users to click on a list of documents that pertain to that case. Further, integration with the CMS has allowed the implementation of “imaging on the bench.” Imaging on the bench closely integrates the CMS and the EDMS, allowing access and retrieval to be point-and-click. The system is actively used by commissioners to process small claims and unlawful detainers. Further application of the system will allow judges to quickly and paperlessly pull files, reducing clerical and paper expenses.

Riverside County has a cross court filing policy, which means documents can be filed in any court. Any branch can scan in documents and they are then available to each location. Seven servers currently support the image database with large image jukeboxes. Yet, unlike other systems, the risks associated with multiple servers is reduced by the devotion of each server to a filing type. That means that in the unlikely event that a server went down; only one filing type is down for that time.

By 1995 the county-wide system was processing 16,000-24,000 pages of civil filings a day. By the end of the 1999, the system had expanded from its modest beginning of managing civil filings to handling all small claims, unlawful detainers, family law, probate and criminal filings.

Benefits of EDMS and CMS integration

In the initial stages of the Riverside project, the court only desired limited integration with their case management system. However, even without the high levels of integration, the court was able to garner several positive benefits:

• Even in the very initial stages of the system, the court experienced high traffic from research attorneys who were no longer required to go the clerk’s office to access files. This has allowed a reduction of at least four additional clerical staff positions and probably two more research attorneys would have been needed at a total annual cost of approximately $280,000.
  
• Public access terminals permit the public to view and copy documents from case files, which reduces clerical time spent in retrieving documents from paper files.
  
• Documents can be filed in any court in the county and are available at all locations.
  
• Case files are not pulled for commissioner calendars, saving labor.

E-Filing

The logical next step for any EDMS is an e-filing system capable of handling a wide variety of cases that come in different formats. Any system must be able to be compatible with any current EDMS, CMS and with the current over-the-counter workflow. More importantly, future expansion and integration is crucial and any system adopted must be LegalXML compatible allowing the transmission of documents over the internet or internally. In Riverside, E-Filing.com has been able to implement an effective E-filing system that has generated significant time and cost efficiencies.

The E-Filing project in Riverside County began modestly with the handling of fax filings. Because the initial EDMS was built on a scalable and open architecture, along with being intimately integrated with the CMS, the introduction of fax filings was simple and quick. Just as important, the further integration of additional e-filing methods has been quick and nearly seamless. This occurred because, as with other projects, E-Filing.com planned for the future.

E-Filing’s system already accepts LegalXML documents. In Riverside, the e-fling system already accepts “client-facing” XML-based forms with attachments (documents) that allow the citizenry or the court employee to fill out legal documents online, sign them electronically and seamlessly file them to the county clerk without any additional headache. Nowhere is this system more apparent than in the integration between the Riverside department of child support services (DCSS) and the court.

In order to file a case under the new automated solution, DCSS transmits two files to the Courts: a data file to be added to the case management system and a .PDF image of the forms. A case number is automatically assigned and indexed. Controlled by a password authentication tool, an electronic “stamping” process allows a court clerk to affix the court stamp to the forms and electronically sign the document. Finally, the accepted case is forwarded to the central repository, which contains some 60 million images of forms. If rejected, the case is returned to DCSS with an email attachment explaining the cause of rejection.

Before the e-filing system, every office involved in a case would have to maintain a paper copy of all the forms presented to the court. Even though the law still requires the Court to house an original paper form, all of its workflow can now be performed online on a central application, minimizing data-entry errors and drastically improving productivity and turnaround time for filings.

The old manual process was not only slow, but also costly. In the past the county housed eight full-time employees whose only job was to physically deliver printed documents to the various courthouses in the County. With electronic routing, those employees can now be working on quality control of case data. And their transportation expenses have been eliminated altogether, which is a major cost saving to the department.

Conclusion

Many of the benefits of the EDMS system in riverside were realized in the short term, like the staff savings of $280,000 annually. The near term and long term returns from the project; the intangible returns from increased public responsiveness due to greater public access to court documents, the quantifiable returns from increased child support collections and decreased court clog due to quicker processing and delivery of documents.