Court Rules - Intro
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    One of the fundamental concerns about electronic briefs is whether courts will accept them.  We have collected the rules from various jurisdictions, including information from our conversations with the clerks for those courts.   This is a work in progress, so check back often.  If we do not have your jurisdiction on the list, send us an email, and we will add it.

We always double-check the rules for any hyperlinked brief that we create, and will make every effort to transfer that information to this list on a regular basis.  TGL Media does not provide legal advice, however, and intends the list to be used as a starting point for research rather than the final answer for every case.

It is important to keep three facts in mind when reading court rules:

    First, most courts using the term "electronic brief" are referring to simple PDF versions of  a pleading.  The "electronic briefs" that TGL Media and other vendors produce contain hyperlinks from the brief to exhibits and case law.  The distinction is important because hyperlinks take much longer to produce than simply converting a brief to PDF.   The hyperlinks also generally require that the briefs be filed on CD-ROM, rather than being emailed or uploaded to the court.  When hyperlinked documents bounce around the Internet, the links tend to become corrupted, and the best way to be absolutely certain that all of the links stay will stay intact is to burn the documents onto a CD.

   Second, courts that do not specifically mention hyperlinked documents in their rules nevertheless generally accept them after the deadline for filing paper or electronic briefs.  The court clerks tend to treat hyperlinked briefs as courtesy copies, and accept them as long as they do not contain additional material.

    Finally, several clerk's offices have said that briefs on CD-ROM should be hand-delivered.  In some courts, particularly federal courts, when the screening machine detects anything other than paper, the envelope is sent off-site for further screening.  When that happens, delivery may be delayed for several weeks or several months.


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