Orange County, California E-Filing Benefits Reported

Orange County Courthouse

In response to our earlier Court Technology Bulletin article regarding the difficulty in quantifying the benefits of E-filing, we heard from the Judicial Council of California regarding a recently submitted report to their legislature on the topic.



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The Judicial Council of California submitted a report to the Legislature in September, 2014 on the Orange County Superior Court’s E-filing pilot project (PDF). The report evaluated the Superior Court of Orange County’s mandatory e-filing in terms of cost-effectiveness for the court, cost to participants, effect on unrepresented parties and parties with fee waivers, and ease of use for participants.

As noted in the report submission letter:

“Overall, the data gathered by the Superior Court of Orange County (1) showed that the pilot project resulted in significant cost savings for the court and was generally less or equally expensive for litigants and (2) demonstrated the project’s relative ease of use and convenience for represented and self-represented litigants. There were limitations in the data collection regarding the effect on self-represented litigants; however, any potential issues were likely addressed by the subsequent amendments to the rules of court exempting all self-represented litigants from mandatory electronic filing.”

The report documented two solid quantifiable benefits, time savings and staff reductions for specific job functions.  It also contains a number of questionnaire results from filers and the self-represented.

We greatly appreciate the Judicial Council of California for sharing this report with us and with our CTB readers.