As a joint civil and family law practitioner, I’ve had the dubious privilege over the past three years of working with both eCourts and Judiciary Electronic Document Submissions (JEDS) on a daily basis. As the inevitable move toward eCourts for family matters seems to be drawing nearer, I thought it might be useful to explore some of the changes that will (largely) improve our practice management.
Unlike eCourts, JEDS does not function as a case management system for the court. It is essentially a mailbox. We file documents there, never to see them again. It is a one-way portal that was (admirably!) set up in the face of the emergency shutdown of the courthouses at the start of the pandemic for use by both attorneys and self-represented litigants. In contrast, eCourts is a more robust system, and can reduce many of the issues that have plagued family practitioners using JEDS. For example, eCourt filings are immediately accessible to judges’ chambers. As I understand it, even now, everything sent through JEDS still must be manually processed and re-uploaded into the court’s internal system.
Not only does eCourts provide immediate access to a judge’s staff, but eCourts also automatically notifies all counsel of record when there is a filing made by either the court or an adversary, and within that email is a direct link to the filing. (However, this immediate notification/document access is not available via eCourts Appellate, and a feature I wish the Appellate Division would adopt.) As such, eCourts reduces the need to email copies, in addition to filing them. It also makes it much easier to track a case history, which can be particularly helpful when an attorney substitutes into a case, either pre- or post-judgment. The only downside to this is that once you are linked to a case, you will sometimes continue to receive alerts even after you are substituted out of the case.
I know there has been substantial discussion among attorneys, with good reason, regarding the concern of public access to Family Court dockets. However, assuming the court can limit public access to these dockets, counsel of record should have the same access to a family case as we do a civil case. This separation is already in place for FN (family neglect) matters, which have been on eCourts for many years. Additionally, eCourts Criminal allows documents to be restricted by the filer in various ways, so we may see that materialize in eCourts for family dockets as well, as a way to address these privacy concerns.
If you have filed a Complaint for Divorce on JEDS recently, you have likely observed one recent shift toward the eCourts process – the entry of party contact information at the outset of a case. For civil matters, that information is used to generate a civil case information statement (the civil equivalent of our Confidential Litigant Information Statement, or CLIS), so that document is no longer prepared and filed separately. That said, I would hope that the CLIS is eventually eliminated, since it should never be part of the public filing and no one has ever adequately explained to me how it helps the Court.
There are certain other adjustments that family practitioners have adapted to as a result of JEDS that will transfer over to eCourts; for example, the filing deadline for a given date is midnight, not when the Courthouse closes at 4:30 p.m., and all attorneys are required to maintain a Judiciary Account Charge System (JACS) account, rather than sending a check for a filing fee.
Here are a few other ways that, if it were up to me, eCourts should function for family law matters:
A docket number is immediately assigned when a complaint is filed.
A track assignment for discovery is automatically set, depending on whether there are children. (R. 4:5A would govern the timing for requests for a change of tracks.)
The discovery end date would be automatically assigned following the filing of an answer based on the track assignment.
An initial case management order should be automatically generated with discovery deadlines based on the track assignment and the filing of the responsive pleading. Early settlement panel dates would be automatically generated in the same way civil arbitration dates are.
Adjournment requests are automatically generated by the system, so a practitioner doesn’t need to draft one – just plug in the information.
One final warning and practice tip! JEDS has a maximum file upload size of 35MB. The maximum upload size for a single file on eCourts is only 7MB. This often requires motion exhibits to be uploaded individually. Additionally, like JEDS, eCourts does not support the filing of video or audio exhibits, only PDF or Word documents.
Alix Claps is a partner with Heymann & Fletcher, Esqs. in Randolph. Her practice areas include Family Law, Civil Litigation, and Appeals. She is a proud member of the Family Law Executive Committee of the New Jersey State Bar Association.