Attorneys in Fayette County can now file their cases without submitting a stack of legal papers.
A new pilot program is promising to streamline the often cumbersome system.
Fayette County is only the sixth of 18 scheduled pilot sites in the Commonwealth for the eFiling program, but Kentucky Chief Justice John Minton says the benefits are already apparent.
"This is a huge game-changer. Culturally, there is probably no other system in the world that's more tied to paper than the court system," he observes.
The Administrative Office of the Courts began offering the electronic filing option just over a week ago and so far the ten cases filed using the new method have been processed without any glitches. Jason Dufeck with the AOC says the system can get a case into the hands of the clerk or a summons approved for the Sheriff’s office in record time.
"They can literally have it done within minutes whereas in the past it could have taken up to a week," he says.
In addition, Fayette Circuit Court Clerk Vincent Riggs notes that another program that’s currently available only to attorneys will soon allow wider access to ongoing case information.
"The private litigant will be able to look up cases without the necessity of coming to the courthouse to look up records. It will all be - at least from August 11 forward - electronic," he says.
Both statewide eFiling and the expanded CourtNet system are expected to come online in 2015.
