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Electronic Case Filing (ECF) CM-ECF (Case Management - Electronic Case Filing) is now live in all Bankruptcy Courts. Even California Eastern which uses its own cCalWebFile system for case opening, still uses the CM (Case Management) side of CM-ECF, as well as the "case upload" or Debtor.txt docketing file. Designed in the mid-1990s as a web based application by the courts to handle the massive number of documents in a consolidated asbestos case in Cleveland, CM-ECF was rushed into service when the court's original EDI (electronic data interchange) system for case opening was scrapped. Never intended for the data driven needs of the bankruptcy court, CM-ECF has become a patchwork of old technology with little or no cost savings to the courts at the expense of great expense to the bar. Necessity being the mother of invention, local courts and software vendors have spent the last decade trying to work around the basic design defects in CM-ECF. The first such innovation came out of California Southern where the court implemented a module called "case upload". For attorneys with petition preparation software, "case upload" cut the work involved in case opening by as much as 15 minutes per case while decreasing the potential for filing errors. Although for years the Administrative Office of US Courts did not support "case upload", Bankruptcy Reform increased the need for data submission to the point that they had no choice but to support it. Now nearly two thirds of the bankruptcy courts use "case upload". Always in the background for all courts, the original "OpenBKCase" method of e-filing is still the only way to file in the remaining courts. Lack of funding, technical expertise, and low post-reform filing rates have left a number of courts without any enhancements to their basic CM-ECF filing system. To compensate for these courts' inability or unwillingness to reduce the costs of filing to the debtors, most of the petition preparation software vendors have developed their own one-click solutions that do not rely upon "case upload" to function. These solutions, while technically easy to implement, are expensive to maintain due to a lack of national standards across a spectrum of 94 courts. Nevertheless, since March, 2009 when the EOUST and the courts began requiring 71 different data fields to be submitted with each new case, filing electronically through petition preparation software has become a virtual necessity. With new CM-ECF updates being implemented several times a year, it has also become a necessity that attorneys who plan to use petition preparation software for e-filing, have up-to-date versions of whatever software they are using. Although every petition preparation program now supports a one-click filing capability it is easy to forget that counting only the last click hides the fact that how hard it is to reach that last click is dramatically different program to program. Anyone can press a single button and call it a one-click solution, but how data gets onto the face of the petition and schedules, how easy it is to train staff, to stay updated, how legally accurate the forms are, and a host of other core tasks is the real work of petition software. Bankruptcy2010™ uses a simple one button wizard to open cases. As part of case opening, it uses its free built-in pdf converter, to automatically create all the files needed for ECF - petition, schedules, plan and Certificate of Credit Counseling. It simultaneously creates an ASCII text matrix (list of creditors) and after checking it for valid zipcodes, files it as part of the same transaction - and yes, with just one click. Not only does Bankruptcy2010™ file your case for you with a single click, but it pops up the "pay.gov" credit card payment window with all of your information, including credit card number and e-mail address in place. All you need to do is press "make payment" in order to pay your filing fees. Nothing could be simpler. |
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