The ability to e-file court documents is slowly becoming more popular around the country, as the cost of tablets and e-readers goes down and the cost of printing and managing paper documents goes up. In November of last year, the Illinois Supreme Court allowed electronic court records to be considered official documents, and slowly but surely smaller courts in the state are taking advantage of this. A few days ago, Mark Von Nida the circuit clerk of the Madison County Courthouse applied for permission from the state for the ability to use e-filing. Once approved, the boxes of files needed for court will be scanned by a document scanning company in order to move to the new system. Currently, the boxes of documents take up an entire floor of the Madison County Administration Building. While this may be a big switch for those used to the past system, many are ready for the change. “From the judicial perspective, it’s really nice. Years ago you used to have a big cart full of files that you had to cart into chambers or courtroom, and you manually went through them,” said Circuit Judge Bill Mudge, according to an Edwardsville Intelligencer article. There will be some challenges, such as making sure other courts in the area will be able to receive and read the new electronic court records, but the article also explained that this will allow the court to expand to an e-citation program, so police offers won’t have to hand write tickets anymore. In general, as more courts follow Madison County’s lead and are all on an e-filing system, sharing documents between courts will be less of an issue, cutting back on paperwork and overall judicial timeline. Tab Service Company is a leading provider of document scanning and data entry services. As an SOC2-approved service organization, we apply industry-best practices to our approach with clients.
