Everything Your Court Wants Before You Hit Submit

Only your attorney of record, or their staff filing under the attorney’s credentials, can do that. In electronic filing the login is the signature: courts treat the account holder as having signed whatever is submitted, which is why registration is limited to attorneys and self-represented parties. A document preparation service cannot lawfully log in as you and submit, and doing so under your credentials would mean someone else signed your pleading. What a preparer CAN do is everything up to the submit button: format the document to the court’s rules, complete the cover sheets and proof of service, identify the filing code, and walk you through the portal while you click submit.

Three layers. First, the court’s electronic filing manager receives and routes submissions; most states run one statewide, though California instead lets each superior court approve its own providers. Second, you reach it through an electronic filing service provider, which is the website you actually log into. Third, you submit an envelope: the PDF plus metadata such as court, case number, party, filing code, service list, and fees. The filing manager validates it, then a human clerk reviews it and either accepts it, returning a conformed stamped copy, or rejects it with a stated reason.

It depends entirely on the court, and this is where filers get caught. In federal district court a self-represented party generally cannot register for CM/ECF without a court order, so you file on paper unless the judge grants leave. In Texas a self-represented litigant is not required to e-file but may register and do so voluntarily. In New York an unrepresented litigant is expressly exempt and need not even respond to the e-filing notice, though they may consent after the clerk explains the options. In California a self-represented party is generally exempt from a mandatory e-filing requirement. Never assume the portal will let you register.

Rejections are almost always mechanical rather than substantive. The recurring causes are: the wrong filing code, a missing or mismatched civil cover sheet on a new case, no proof of service attached, a document that is not text-searchable because it was scanned, a secured or password-protected PDF, pagination that does not start at the cover page on an appellate brief, missing bookmarks, a file over the size limit, or everything combined into one PDF when the court wants separate documents. A rejection is not a ruling; you correct the stated defect and resubmit.

Sometimes, and you cannot safely assume it. Some courts treat a corrected resubmission as filed on the date of the original submission, and some do not; the rule and the local practice vary. If your deadline has passed or is about to, call the clerk the same day rather than relying on relation back. This is the single most expensive assumption in electronic filing, because the filer feels they met the deadline while the docket shows nothing.

An electronic filing service provider is the front end you log into to reach the court’s filing manager. Formally it is any entity with production access to the filing manager’s connector, which can be a company, a government body, or a large law firm. Most states offer a free basic provider alongside commercial ones (One Legal, InfoTrack, File & ServeXpress and others) that compete on interface and add-on services. You are not required to pay for a commercial provider to file.

A filing code is the court’s classification of what you are submitting, chosen from a dropdown in the portal. It controls how the clerk routes the document, what fee is charged, and how it appears on the docket. Picking the wrong one is a top-two rejection cause because the code lists are long, cryptic, and near-duplicative: many courts have both a generic “Motion” and a specific code for your motion type, and only the specific one is correct. On a new case, selecting a subsequent-filing code guarantees rejection because there is no case number for the envelope to attach to.

No, and in one state you should not. PDF/A is an archival format that requires every font to be embedded, and courts like New York ask for it. But the Texas judicial technology standards state that documents may not contain embedded fonts, which is the direct opposite. Florida’s portal prefers PDF/A and will convert a Word filing to it for you. There is no single “court-safe PDF”: build the file for the court you are filing in, which is why the packet below is court-specific rather than generic.

On a new case, a civil cover sheet: JS-44 federally, CM-010 in California, the Civil Case Information Sheet in Texas, Form 1.997 in Florida. On any responsive or motion filing, a proof of service. On a motion, frequently a proposed order, and many courts want that in editable Word form through a separate lodging step rather than as a filed PDF. If you cannot pay, a fee waiver: FW-001 in California, AO 239/240 federally, a Statement of Inability to Afford Payment of Court Costs in Texas.

No. The receipt confirms the portal received your envelope. Acceptance by the clerk is what makes it filed, and it can arrive hours or a business day later. Until then the document is pending and can still be rejected. Save both, and when the acceptance arrives download the conformed stamped copy immediately: the Texas standards, for example, keep an accepted document available to the filer for only 30 days.