eFiling Frequently asked Questions Here is list of tips and tricks for your review:
Anyone can eFile if they have an account. If you are an attorney licensed by the court then you can request an account as an attorney. If you are an authorized Form 50 Agent in Justice of the Peace Court, you can also request an account. If you are not a licensed attorney you can still get an account but you will be registered as someone that represents yourself. This is known as a Pro Se filer. There are other types of parties such as Pro Hac or interested parties but currently you cannot register under these roles. As a condition of approving an eFiling account, the court requires you to establish a court debit account and to maintain a minimum balance in that account to draw against your filing charges.
Currently the court is not charging to register. Once you have registered there is no additional eFiling fee at this time, however the standard court filing fees are still applicable. Please refer to the courts' web page to review the filing fees charged by the court.
Go to the eFiling website and look for the link to register for eFiling. This link will take you to the eFiling login screen.
On the login page you will click on the button that says "Request Account". This will take you through a series of screens that will ask you questions. The first screen will ask you to review the Terms of Usage agreement established by the court. To continue you must select the radio button that you agree to the agreement then press the Submit button.
After you have agreed to the terms of usage, you will be asked to select your user role. The Registered Filer (Pro Se) does not have to affiliate themselves with a company or organization, but all other role types do. If you have questions about which role best identifies you, then contact the court. To continue you must select the radio button for the role type and click the next button. At this point you will need to select a company, either existing or new. It is neccessary to identify what company you are associated with, so that each user is associated with an organization. For example, if you are an attorney and you belong to a law firm you would select the name of that law firm if it already exists in the list. The pull-down option contains the organizations currently registered in eFlex. If your organization is not listed click the second radio button (New) and type in your law firm's name and then click next. If you are an agent and you represent multiple companies, you have two options. The easiest way is to set yourself up as your own company. Another way is to establish multiple eFiling accounts, one under each company you represent.
The next screen has several questions to fill out. An asterisk next to a field indicates that the information for that field is required. You will be able to provide your personal info that will make up your user profile such as user name (login) and password. Please remember that the username and password are case sensitive and that the username must be unique. If the username you enter is not unique when you submit your request you will be prompted to select a different username. Once all the information is completed, click Submit to send the account request to the Iowa Courts Administrator. As soon as the Administrator approves your account you will receive an email message at the email address you entered with your registration information.
For a training schedule please refer to the courts' eFiling website or contact the Justice of the Peace Court to arrange training. Many attorneys find that this system is not unlike other systems. You may find that reading the online documentation is enough information to get you started.
You can initiate several types of cases through the eFiling system and eFile follow-up filings on those case types. When you are not sure if you can eFile on a particular case when you select file to an existing case you can type the case number and a participant's last name and press Submit. The eFiling system will query the case management system to see if you can file on this case and if you cannot it will return an error otherwise it will allow you to continue eFiling on that case.
The eFiling system is browser based. You do not need to install any special eFiling software. You do need a computer that is connected to the web and has a browser installed. You can useInternet Explorer from Microsoft, or any other browser that has been released in the last three years. It is anticipated that your computer will have a word processing software such as Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect. You can even create your documents using WordPad, a free word processing tool that comes free with the Microsoft Windows operating system. It really does not matter what operating system you use. Some might use the Macintosh or Linux operating system. You just need to prepare your documents, save them to your computer's hard drive or scan them in, and then use the browser to submit your documents.
We recommend that you use a high speed internet connection. The system will work using modem dial-up but the challenge is that when you need to up-load or down-load large documents to the court a dial-up modem is more likely to time-out or disconnect. In addition you will most likely be frustrated with how slow the system will respond. Most internet connections have faster download speeds than upload speeds. That is because most people on the web are downloading information rather than uploading information. The upload speed can be 3 to 5 times slower than the download speed.
Most courts using electronic filing are currently treating the use of an attorney’s unique system login and password along with /S/Attorney Name as a signature. Attorneys/parties should retain documents containing original signatures for the pendency of the case to include the appeal time.
Only counsel of record and parties to the case may remotely view or access electronically filed cases. However, any registered party on a case can view the case history.
When a document is eFiled, a Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) is automatically generated and emailed to the registered parties in the case. The NEF includes the title of the document filed, the filing date and time, and the filing party. The Certificate of Service for each case lists those parties who are being served electronically as well as those parties who may need to be notified by a paper copy of the submission. In the NEF, there is also a link to the Court website ECF login page where participants can log in and access the case file as well as any documents filed with the case.
The Service List from the "My cases" screen will tell you who was notified electronically and who would need to be notified by traditional methods. Also when you do a case history, you can show/hide participants on the case.
Any user with an account that knows the case number, and county can view the case summary. Only counsel of record on the case may remotely view or access electronically filed documents.
If you are experiencing problems when viewing others PDF's, it might be because of a difference in the version of the Adobe PDF Reader.
As of April 19th 2010, the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader version is 9.3.1.
Here is how to check your Adobe Reader version. While in Adobe Reader, click Help on the main Menu and choose About Acrobat 9...
Adobe Reader prides itself on compatibility and has a PDF doc that talks about it. Here is a link:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/reader/articles/reader_compatibility/reader_compatibility_promise.pdf
The follwing is some quoted text from the Compatibilty Promise PDF:
The promise of compatibility in Adobe Reader means, at the most general level, that documents will behave in the same way regardless of the version of Adobe Reader in which they are opened. However, due to product improvements, bug fixes, and operating system changes, there will inevitably be differences based on the Adobe Reader version.
So, the key is to get everyone that has an old version of adobe Reader to update to a new version of Adobe Reader.