Electronic court filing


Electronic court filing, or e-filing, is the automated transmission of legal documents from an attorney, party or self-represented litigant to a court, from a court to an attorney, and from an attorney or other user to another attorney or other user of legal documents.

Technical standards

The LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee, a subcommittee of OASIS, with members representing both public and private sector organizations, has developed technical specifications that provide for standardization of the following for electronic filing of court documents:
These XML-based standards support the implementation of electronic court filing but they do not define court policies. In 2003, the National Center for State Courts published .
In the summer of 2009, the NCSC commenced a survey of the usage of e-filing in state courts across the country, including U.S. Territories. The survey responses were published in the .

Release history

ECF 1.1

This version was approved by the NCSC Joint Technology Committee as a recommended standard in 2002.

ECF 2.0

This version number was skipped in order to create a linkage between GJXDM 3.0.

ECF 3.0

In an effort to promote implementation of the ECF 4.0 specification, the OASIS LegalXML ECF committee developed a "quick start guide", the 7 Steps to Electronic Filing with Electronic Court Filing 4.0. The guide provides information on the following topics:
The serves as the primary source of documentation and support.