Florida eFiling – Are You Still Printing & Scanning?

This is a reminder from a September 1, 2015 article from The Florida Bar:

CLICK HERE to read the full document. 

Currently, lawyers, when filing through the statewide portal that handles e-filing for the court system, are supposed to file all documents in the Word format or a word searchable version of PDF. Most don’t. Shaw said a sampling of portal filings showed only around 27 percent were complying with that mandate. Most of the noncompliance came from the use of scanners, he said, echoing comments of others involved in the e-filing system.

Lawyers take a document prepared with word processing software and then print it out so it can be manually signed in ink. Then it’s scanned, Shaw said, and even though it may be then converted to a PDF document, it’s not a searchable version of PDF because it’s a picture of a text document.