June E Newsletter

US District Court for
the District of Utah

Volume 9
June 2006

Inside This Issue

Always Double Check your PDF	Anniversary Poem	Cited Authorities
Color PDF's	Discovery Certificate of Service	Filing Declarations and Affidavits
Filing Sealed Documents	Forwarding emails to Blackberry's	Happy Anniversary
Note From Clerk's Office	Redaction Warnings
		View Previous Newsletters

Note from the Clerk's Office

Welcome to this edition of our newsletter. This newsletter serves to update all our e-filers on CM/ECF. It also provides tips and reminders to make your electronic filing experience a more pleasant one. Please share this with your support staff who assist you with filing in CM/ECF.

Efiling is now MANDATORY for all members of the Court's Bar! If you are not yet a registered efiler and have not yet signed up for a training session, please do so today! You can register for training on-line at http://ors.utd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/class.pl

If you are not sure how to efile a document call the Help Desk BEFORE you file the document!

Happy Anniversary!

While some attorneys efiled their first pleadings in CM/ECF last month, on May 2nd the Court celebrated one year of being on the CM/ECF system. It has been a very busy year full of transition, learning, training, and creating and improving new processes. Our in-house poet, David Singer, summarized the year for all of us. His poem may be read below. During that year there were 88,886 documents filed by court users and 12,396 documents efiled on the CM/ECF system. All documents that are efiled by attorneys are checked by court staff for accuracy and correct PDF attachment.

During the first full month of Mandatory efiling there were 2,913 documents efiled by attorneys out of a total of 6,328 documents filed in the month of May. That means that 31.5% of the documents were efiled by attorneys. This is an impressive increase over previous months and will continue to rise as more attorneys become registered and begin efiling to comply with the rules of the court.

CAUTION!!! Are You Filing a Sealed Document?
Please review Local Rule DUCivR 5-2(d).

If a sealed document is not clearly identified for the clerk and the pleading is docketed, notification from CM/ECF goes to everyone in the case and the documents are available through PACER as soon as it is posted to the docket. Help us out by to filing a sealed document pursuant to the local rules and ensure it will be entered as sealed on the docket.

Sealed documents MUST be placed unfolded in an envelope with a copy of the cover page of the document affixed to the outside of the envelope (tape or glue the entire cover page to the envelope to ensure it is not torn off). The pleading caption on the cover page MUST include a notation that the document is being filed under court seal. The sealed document with a judge's copy must be filed with the clerk.

Redaction Warnings!

It is very important to redact your pleadings prior to submitting them on CM/ECF. It is also important that you know the proper way to redact the document. The following is taken from an article on Judge Nuffer's Blog located at http://utd-cmecf.blogspot.com/

As an example of how easily things can go wrong, yesterday [a document was filed] in [a case filed in the District of Utah] that failed to properly redact anything. Although white block-out rectangles were placed over some pieces of text, the text can easily be recovered. (One method to do so, using the standard Adobe PDF viewer, is to select the redacted text with the mouse, copy it to the system clipboard, and then paste it into a word processor.)

Here is a selection of relevant references...:

1. "Redacting with Confidence: How to Safely Publish Sanitized Reports Converted From Word to PDF", National Security Agency, Report #I333-015R-2005, February 2, 2006. http://www.nsa.gov/snac/vtechrep/I333-TR-015R-2005.PDF

2. "Redaction of Confidential Information in Electronic Documents", Adobe Systems (creators of the PDF format), Technical Note, 2006. http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/acrobat/Redaction.pdf

3. "Redaction of Information", United States District Court, District of Northern California, Web site tip, May 2, 2005. http://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/faq/tips/redacting.htm

As the listed articles suggest, PDF redaction is not an intuitive process. Because of the multi-layer content of a PDF file (image and text and metadata), redaction is not a WYSIWYG process. Just like any other new tool, there are hurdles that will be overcome as we learn to work with PDF editing programs, but in the meantime inadvertent errors will occur.

For more information please visit Judge Nuffer's Blog located at http://utd-cmecf.blogspot.com/

COLORS are pretty to look at and lovely as can be, but when creating your PDF make it as BLACK and WHITE as can be! Unless photos, maps or colored images you see, in which case, a PDF with COLORS may be what it needs to be! If your document is black and white, set your scanner for black and white to keep the document file size smaller. Please only use the color scanning when it is necessary. Color scanning is not necessary for signatures! Smaller file sizes mean faster upload and download times for everyone. Please note: If the judges print colored documents they will be printed in black and white. If they are exhibits that should be seen in color, they should be submitted in paper.

Always Double Check Your PDF and Case Number

If you attended a training here at the Court you probably heard at least one of the many stories that we have here about attaching the incorrect PDF to an entry. We are trained to double check our case number and the PDF before we attach the document, but sometimes we continue to provide new opportunities for you to learn from our errors. Below is one such instance provided courtesy of Judge Nuffer.

Monday, May 1, 2006 marked another e-filing gaffe for Judge Nuffer as he self-docketed a document related to criminal pre-trial supervision in a totally unrelated civil case. The error was one that can be very common. Because CM/ECF remembers the last case viewed, when moving from one case to the next, it is important to check that the current case is the intended case for docketing. As a frequent filer, Judge Nuffer has made several e-filing errors. Fortunately, capable staff at the court are usually able to clarify the confused docket, though the evidence of the errors usually remains in place.

Forwarding emails to Blackberries, PDAs and Smart Phones

The court has received a number of returned emails when the attorney has chosen to auto-forward the email to their Blackberry or other PDA device. These devices typically have limited storage space for emails, resulting in returned messages. In view of the number of returned emails that we have received, we suggest that when forwarding an email to a Blackberry, that it not be deleted from the initial email account, until it is read, to prevent accidental loss.

If you are unsure what event to use to file a document, CALL the Help Desk at (801)524-3248

Helpful Hints from the Help Desk

Question: Does my declaration or affidavit have to be separate from my memorandum?
Answer: The declaration or affidavit may be an attachment to a memorandum or it can be filed separately. If filed separately they must be linked to the motion and the memorandum so that it will appear on the judge's motions report.

Question: How do I file a Certificate of Service for discovery documents?
Answer: The Certificate of Service event is found under "Service of Process". This event will allow you to text in what document was served. There is not a separate Discovery event for these types of certificates of service.

Judge Nuffer's Resource page contains many helpful resources and links. Check out the recently added Creating hyperlinks to cited authorities video. (requires Flash player).

The Anniversary

Today is the second of May
A rather ordinary day
But not for us
In this here Court

It represents a day
We thought we’d not survive
One year ago today
CM/ECF went live.

We couldn’t even think
A year in advance
We thought by now
We’d be just raves and rants

We’ve waited and waited
For the big system crash
That would have turned our brains
Into something like corned beef hash

But we stood up
We did it!
We survived
We even taught others how to do it.
That doesn’t seem right.
But we stuck together
And became more tight.

A shared experience
I think it is called
Our brains and bodies
Slapped around and mauled.
But we did it!

The Courthouse is still standing
The Clerk’s Office still opens its doors
But we’ve now planted our CM/ECF seeds
Like they were millions of spores

The changes will continue.
I think of my grandpas
Who went from horses to cars
Radios and TV’s
Airplanes and computers
Vaccinations for disease

It seems their leaps
Were so much bigger than ours
Baby steps we seem to have taken
Little drizzles compared
To their thundershowers

So let’s keep our goals in proper perspective
And to the past remain always respective
We celebrate these important events
To those coming along now
It all makes little sense.

But we did it!

D. J. Singer 2006