BULK E-MAIL AND FAX FILING Peg Allison, Flathead County Clerk of Court Shirley Faust, Missoula County Clerk of Court Email & Fax Filing Incoming Applicable MCA references: MT Civil Procedure Rule 5. Serving and Filing Pleadings and other Papers. Rule 5 (d) (3) Electronic Filing, Signing, or Verification. A court may, by local rule, allow papers to be filed, signed, or verified by electronic means, including facsimile, that are consistent with any technical standards established by the court or local rule. A paper filed by electronic means in compliance with a local rule is a written paper for purposes of these rules. 25-1-201. Fees of clerk of district court. 25-1-201 (r) for filing a pleading by facsimile or e-mail in all criminal and civil proceedings, 50 cents per page. Examples of a court order / local rule establishing permission to file by email or fax and an example of an order vacating the order allowing permission follows on the next page. Guideline for handling incoming EMAILED documents (when allowed by local order/rule): 1) Print 1 st page of electronic document for purpose of filing and either file-stamp with date and time received electronically or print 1 st page of email message to preserve date and time of receipt 2) Save image to a folder on computer 3) Attach image in FC a. Click Images button on first screen > Add File > browse to image just saved > double click or highlight and click Open > save b. Highlight and copy the Document ID number; close Images window 4) Docket pleading may use FC code EMAILDOC, but this option does not allow the document to be reflected if you look at Docs Only in the Register of Actions screen; otherwise it is suggested that you indicate in the ROA text that the document was emailed, i.e., EMAILED Motion for Continuance a. paste Document ID number in the Imaging document ID field of the ROA entry 5) Initial (or sign), sequence number and bracket printed 1 st page of digital document 6) Send statement by return email for the fee pursuant to 25-1-201(r) or secure payment per policy and practice for receipting fees
Guideline for handling incoming FAXED documents (when allowed by local order/rule): 1) File stamp with date and time to preserve date of receipt; fax machine may date and time stamp document also 2) Docket pleading suggest indicating in the ROA text that the document was received via facsimile, i.e., FAXED Motion for Continuance 3) Initial (or sign), sequence number and bracket in court file as normal 4) Send statement for the fee pursuant to 25-1-201(r) or secure payment per policy and practice
RULES OF PRACTICE, FORMS and ORDERS MONTANA FOURTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT Court MISSOULA AND MINERAL COUNTIES RULE 3: FILING OF PLEADINGS, DEPOSITION, BRIEFS, NOTES OF ISSUE ETC. F. Fax and E-Mail Filings. Documents may be submitted for filing by email or facsimile. Documents submitted by email must be emailed to clerkofcourt@co.missoula.mt.us and those submitted by facsimile must be faxed to (406) 258-4899. An original must be provided as indicated in (3) below. The following guidelines must be followed: (1) All Documents must be properly signed and dated. (2) Emailed documents must be in a PDF format and submitted as an attachment to an email. (3) A hard copy original of a faxed or emailed document must be provided within five (5) business days for a document exceeding twenty (20) pages in length. (4) A hard copy original need not be provided for a document twenty (20) pages or less in length. (5) By document the Court means any combination of a motion/brief/affidavit, etc. along with attachments/appendices/exhibits which when taken together exceed twenty (20) pages in length. This applies to both civil and criminal cases. (6) The Clerk of Court shall print a faxed or emailed document which is twenty (20) pages or less in length and treat the same as the original. (7) The Clerk of Court shall print and date stamp only the email or fax cover page of a document exceeding twenty (20) pages in length. Said document shall be saved directly into the case management system, FullCourt. The hard copy original shall be filed upon receipt.
Email Outgoing New Fee - $.25/page for documents provided by email/fax 25-1-201. Fees of clerk of district court. 25-1-201(1)(d)(iii) for providing copies of papers on file in the clerk's office by facsimile, e-mail, or other electronic means in all criminal and civil proceedings, 25 cents per page; Emailing from ROA screen This method may be preferred when you only have one document to be emailed. 1. Click on the ROA of the document to be emailed. 2. To view the image, click the Image button on the bottom of the screen (Alt + m). 3. When the image box appears, click Send Email (Alt + l)
4. You now have the option of sending only the current page or all pages of the document. The default is set for the radio button next to All Pages so if you want to send all pages simply click OK or just press the Enter key. 5. When the Send Email box appears, you can either type in the email address or click on FullCourt Address Book 6. If you choose FullCourt Address Book the window below will appear. Simply click to place a check in the box of each person to whom the document is to be emailed. After all recipients have been checked click the Return with Selected Recipients button.
7. You will be returned to the Send Email screen and the addresses you selected will populate in the To: box. Note that all addresses are separated by a semi-colon and no space. This format must be followed or the email will not be sent. Click Send to send the email (Alt + s) 8. When the Send Email box appears simply click OK and you will be returned to the Image window.
9. An ROA will be added to the ROA screen which details the date/time the email was sent along with the email address of all recipients and the name of the document attachment. Emailing from Images button on main case screen one by one This method may be preferred when you have multiple documents to be emailed. Each email creates an ROA. 1. Click on the Images button located at the bottom of the main case screen 2. When the FullCourt Imaging Case Documents window appears, click on the Document ID of the 1 st document you want to email. Then click Send Email. 3. Follow steps 4-8 above (Emailing from ROA Screen).
4. After you click OK in step 8, you will be returned to the FullCourt Imaging Case Documents window. 5. Scroll up or down to find the next document you wish to email. You can use your mouse to scroll or you may wish to use the up and down arrows. 6. Continue following steps 4-8 for each document until you have emailed all documents you wish to email. Emailing from Images button on main case screen with all documents to be attached to the same email. This method may be preferred when you have multiple documents to be emailed. Because you are sending only one email, one ROA is created and lists all documents. 1. Click on the Images button located at the bottom of the main case screen 2. When the FullCourt Imaging Case Documents window appears, click on the Document ID of the 1 st document you want to email. Then click Send Email. 3. You now have the option of sending only the current page or all pages of the document. The default is set for the radio button next to All Pages so if you want to send all pages simply click OK or just press the Enter key.
4. When the Send Email box appears, click Cancel (Alt + a) 5. Continue with steps 2-4 until you are on the last document you wish to send. At the last document, instead of clicking Cancel, click Attach File (Alt + f)
6. Browse to the C directory and double click on the FULLCRT_IMG folder to open it. 7. Double click on the folder with your FullCourt User name to open it. 8. Double click on the pdf folder to open it. 9. You ll see a list of the documents that you just canceled. Double click the first document and it will appear as an attachment to your email.
10. Click Attach File again and continue repeating steps 5, 9 & 10 until you ve attached all documents. 11. Now click Send (Alt +s) and am email with the documents attached will be sent. One ROA with all documents listed will appear in the ROA screen. CAUTION: This method only works if all of your documents have different document titles. If you have documents with the same document title, only one document with that title will be saved in the pdf folder.
CaseMail This method may be used when you want to communicate with counsel but don t have a document to send. Sending an email by this method does not create an ROA. 1. Click on the CaseMail button on the bottom of the case main screen. 2. When the Send Email window appears enter the email address, type a message and click Send. You may also use the FullCourt Address Book. 3. An ROA will not be created. Search Menu Click on Search located on the top menu bar (Alt + r) Attorney Use to look up cases to which the attorney has been entered as counsel of record. Attorney Hit the drop down button and then type the last name of the attorney. Case Status The case status drop down defaults to Open but you can select any other case status as well as all statuses.
Detail Displays the attorney s Case - You can go directly to a case by pointing to the case number and then clicking Case at the bottom of the screen Judge A quick method for looking up a specific judge s cases Look-up Statutes A quick method for looking up a statute Party Search Allows you to search for a party by any field including: Last Name First Name Middle Name Suffix Company Mailing AddressSSN DOB Must be the exact date. License To search, enter data into the field by which you want to search and click Retrieve. To clear all of the fields and start over, click Query
The information below was copied directly from Help F1 in FullCourt Query - Query Mode is the search mode that is active when you first open the Party Search window. When the window is in Query Mode, the program searches for an exact match for the characters you enter. That is, if you enter the last name "smith", then all individuals with the exact last name of "Smith" will be retrieved, but names beginning with "Smith", like "Smithson", will not. Soundex - "Soundex" is a computer programming term that means "sounds like". Use Soundex mode to search for names that sound like the name you type. For example, if you were to click on the Soundex button, then type the last name "smit" and press the Retrieve button, you would see all names that sound like "smit", such as "smith" and "smythe". The Soundex Mode is very useful when you don't know exactly how to spell a name. When you use Soundex Mode, only the last name, first name, middle name, suffix, and company name are available for the search. See Party Search Criteria (below) for information about other types of searches, such as partial names or numbers. When you perform a search, FullCourt doesn't care whether you use upper- or lower-case letters. It converts all the letters you enter to upper-case to perform the search. There is, however, ONE EXCEPTION: If you are searching for a name that contains "embedded capitals" (the name contains a capital letter that is not the first letter in the name). YOU MUST TYPE THE EXACT SEQUENCE OF CAPITALS AND LOWER-CASE LETTERS Party Search Criteria There are several ways you may search for a party in the Party Search Window. One of these is to use one of the several "search criteria" available in FullCourt. Search criteria provide a way of searching for individuals other than by an exact match. In the following syntax, the symbol "x.." is used to designate any quantity of any letter, number, or other character. All examples shown pertain to a "last name" search, but they can be used on any search field other than DOB. Please note that all characters entered in these special searches are case-sensitive. The following examples illustrate how to perform last-name searches in the Query Mode, using criteria other than a single, complete last name. Syntax Example Result >=x.. >=S Names beginning with "S", and all others after "S" <x.. <S Names before the ones beginning with "S" <=x.. <=S Names beginning with "S", and all others before "S" <>x.. <>Smith All names other than "Smith" (not equal to) like x..% like Sm% All names which begin with "Sm". The % symbol is a wild card. It means "anything else". If you leave out the % sign, then it becomes only those names which are "Sm", and there are probably not many of
not like x..% not like Sm% those. Using the "like" operator without the % symbol is the same as not using any special search criteria at all. all names which do not begin with "Sm" Batch Processing Click on Cases located on the top menu bar (Alt + e) Click on Batch Processing Attorney Reassignment Use to assign one attorney s cases to another attorney. Hearing Reassignment Use to move hearings from one date to another. Say your judge is called out of town due to a family emergency and has issued orders to change all cases from one law and motion date to another. This feature allows you to change all of the hearing in FullCourt at once. Judge Reassignment Use when one judge assumes jurisdiction over multiple cases of another judge. Physical File Location Update Use to route files for a law and motion day to the clerk who is scheduled to cover court with the judge. Document Service A Summons, Execution Writ, etc. can be issued from the Document Service window and automatically create the ROA. Likewise, when a document has been filed back, you can change the status in the Document Service window to automatically create an ROA. Using the Document Service window provides a means to easily identify the status of a document which has been issued for service. Note: You should probably contact one of the trainers to be certain your system has the configured such that an ROA with a document sequence number will automatically be generated. To issue a document from Document Service 1. Click on the party tab under which the document service should be issued.
2. Click on Document Service 3. At the Document Service window click New (Alt + n)
4. At Document type: click the drop down box and select the document type and enter the date the document is being issued. The date will always default to today s date. Click Save. 5. Click Yes when Save changes appears 6. An ROA will be generated with a document sequence #. You can tweak the text as needed ie remove the duplicate word Summons:, and then click OK (or hit Enter).
To create an ROA when a document is returned (whether served or unserved) 1. Open the Document Service window 2. Enter a date in the Status Date field 3. Choose the appropriate status from the drop down box next to Status. 4. Add comments to the Comment box as needed. For instance, if an Acknowledgement of Service is received but not the original Summons, you could enter Acknowledgement of Service. Or if a summons is returned but service is not sufficient for entry of default, you could enter Service not sufficient for entry of default in the comment box. 5. Click Save and an ROA will be generated. Again, you can tweak the text as needed.
Move Attorney When an attorney s name appears more than one time in your attorney table, you have the ability to Move the attorney record you don t want/need to the attorney record you want to keep. 1. First pull up the attorney record you do not need to keep. Often times these are attorney records which were created for conversion purposes. Click Move. 2. When the Move Attorney box appears, use the drop down box to choose the attorney record you wish to keep. Click Move.
3. At Move Attorney - Move all cases from???? to????, click Yes. 4. At Move Attorney Attorney move completed, click OK 5. At Attorney Maintenance Delete Delete this attorney, click Yes. Useful Reports Cases By Date Can identify cases within a specific date range - not only by case type, but also by subtype. This is useful when a customer requests examples of a specific case subtype for research purposes. Bond Reports Useful in identifying cases in which you ve forgotten to exonerate a bond. Dispositions By Date Useful for person who conduct research on a specific charge and want to track convictions, sentences imposed, etc. Name Index Report Can be printed under user public and be provided to the public. Lists names of parties in cases within a date range. Can be sorted by case number or name. ROA Entries By Date - Useful for proofing ROA text for accuracy.