Insist that your litigation firms e-file as much as possible

The home page of @Court, provider of a “nationwide, Legal XML-compliant electronic filing service,” presents figures about a technique for litigation cost reduction.

Every year, @Court states, more than 370 million documents are filed in state and federal courts, yet only a tiny fraction are filed electronically. Further, “of the $260 billion spent in 1999 on litigation, over $20 billion was spent on support services that include processing, delivering and filing legal documents.” Specifically, “lawyers spend an average of $90 per filing on copying documents, processing checks for payment of court fees, preparing documents for distribution, delivery via couriers or other paper-based system, and related overhead costs.” @Court offers to file electronic documents for $15.

It strikes me that law departments ought to request from their litigation counsel a report on counsel’s use of electronic filing, as well as what they can do to reduce costs by electronically filing more litigation papers.