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E-Filing, Caselines, and Everything in Between

We know that COVID-19 protocols and procedures have had everyone thrown off course more times than any of us care to admit. Once we’ve had a chance to figure out and implement one practice direction, we are undoubtedly thrown a new one. You may be wondering what is actually going on in the world of court filing and vaguely remember someone saying something about a thing called Caselines, don’t panic, I have tried to simplify it for you:

Commercial List and Estates List Filing Direction:

  • Effective immediately, all proceedings that require any material to be filed must be done through the Civil Submissions Online portal.
  • You are also required to establish a storage space on sync.com that is unique to the case and upload the materials there. This is meant to replace sending materials to the judge and the Commercial/Estates list office by email.
  • Signing up is for free (although there are options to purchase plans)
    • Please note that if you file your documents on a weekday between 8:30 to 5:00 pm, it will be considered to be filed at that time, however, if you file your documents outside regular business hours, it will be considered filed the next business day.
  • After you submit your documents on the portal, you will receive an on-screen confirmation that your documents have been submitted but are not yet filed or issued by the court. Take a screenshot or print a copy of this screen for your records.
  • Court staff will review your documents within 5 business days to determine if they are accepted for filing or issuance.
    • If your documents are accepted, you will receive an email confirmation of the same.
    • If your documents are rejected, you will receive an email with reasons for the rejection and any filing fee payment will be refunded.

Now that we’ve made it this far, please note that this is just a temporary measure until the court moves all files over to the new CaseLines system. What is CaseLines you ask? It is a user-friendly cloud-based document sharing and storage e-hearing platform for remote and in-person court proceedings.

There is an 18-minute CaseLines tutorial available on how to access, update, invite people and review evidence for cases here. Please note that when you are submitting to CaseLines, you still must follow the page limits set out in the rules of the court, practice directions and Notices.

I hope you found this helpful (at least until the next practice direction)!