Even with courts reopened and pandemic restrictions lifted, eFiling is here to stay. More and more courts are allowing or requiring electronic filing for most types of legal documents.
After years of experience with eFiling, legal professionals still deal with rejections on a regular basis. This isn’t particularly surprising — in the days of paper filing, you could watch as the clerk reviewed your document, allowing you to fix any minor issues at the counter. With eFiling, you submit through an online portal. If there are problems with the filing, you won’t know until it gets rejected.
Rejected eFilings are usually returned with a short note instructing you to fix the errors and resubmit. These notes might be specific. For example, a clerk might note that a specific field on a form cannot be left blank and should be filled in with N/A if it doesn’t apply.
In many cases, though, rejections are more confusing than helpful.
InfoTrack created this rejection reasons report to help you understand why clerks don’t accept every filing. We analyzed rejections from July 2021 through June 2022, reviewing data from multiple states and multiple electronic filing managers (EFMs). This close examination of rejection reason data is here to help you improve your eFiling processes. By taking a closer look at the detailed reasons clerks reject eFilings, we hope to help you avoid these kinds of errors. We invite you to review the entire report HERE.