Do you have those recurring nightmares that you’ve missed an important court hearing or statute deadline? Courts regularly change requirements and deadlines, making it very difficult to stay on top of all those changes and build them into your calendar system. And if you occasionally work with firms outside your geographic area, you may need to brush up on local court deadlines.
Despite all the improvements in technology, the American Bar Association and liability carriers continue to report that missed deadlines are still a leading cause of legal malpractice claims. In fact, insurers require law firms to have two separate calendar systems for tracking critical dates.
Lawyers in California have a more burdensome system than other jurisdictions. The California legal system has many more jurisdictions; there are more localities, each with its own special rules and deadlines. As a result, many of the original legal docket programs were created by California-based companies.
Most courts now allow attorneys and legal professionals, and often the public, to look up court dates on their website. Depending on the practice area and jurisdiction, courts might even offer to send interested parties an e-mail with upcoming court deadlines. For example, in New Jersey, court dates are posted at www.judiciary.state.nj.us/calendars.htm. The site provides a variety of ways to view the court calendar based on such search criteria as county, judge, law firm, etc.
The New Jersey Judicial Elec-tronic Filing System (JEFIS) is limited to attorneys and allows them to file pleadings electronically. It also includes online lookup of their upcoming deadlines and case status. New Jersey litigators must comply with best practices and ensure they meet not only the statute of limitations but interim court deadlines as well. The court system requires an attorney or firm to establish an account with a minimum of $300. The system is designed primarily to support electronic filing and is more limited in notifying attorneys of upcoming deadlines and changes in requirements. While court rules are accessible, having a second, more proactive method for calculating and monitoring approaching deadlines is a better option than a malpractice suit.
Deadlines tool
Legal practice management systems include tools to create your own rules-based deadline systems. What these systems miss is the ability to monitor court changes and automatically incorporate those into your deadlines. The Achilles heel inherent in these systems is that they rely too heavily on individuals within a firm to check and maintain any changes that would update future deadlines. Online systems are more readily updated when there are changes to rules or deadlines.
Deadlines on Demand (DOD), a CompuLaw company that provides online legal date calculations for sole practitioners and smaller law firms, factors in all court rules and special holidays. DOD, at www.deadlines.com, incorporates CompuLaw’s extensive library of rules databases, which includes jurisdictions in all 50 states, including state, federal, appellate, Supreme Court, bankruptcy, probate, family law and much more. In a future column, I’ll review Compu-Law’s software-based calendar product, CompuLaw Vision, which is marketed and priced for medium-sized and larger firms, and has more features and options.
With Deadlines on Demand, court rules and deadlines are at your fingertips — they’re literally available on demand. You’re charged per use.
Tools like DOD help ensure deadlines are correct when entered into your electronic calendar. The average search costs about $27, but can range from $5 to $99, depending on the jurisdiction and number of court rules. According to the company, 80 percent of its customers bill their clients directly for the search costs. Additionally, some professional liability carriers offer a discount for using such programs.
Navigating the site
Once logged onto Deadlines on Demand, select your jurisdiction, for example, New Jersey Superior Court Rules. You then choose from options such as discovery, motions, pleadings, alternative dispute resolution, trial or orders and judgments. From there, the steps vary depending on the nature of the event. If you select “trial,” the next screen displays fields for the matter name, date and time. At this point, you’ll be informed whether there are a few deadlines (lower cost), medium number of deadlines or a large number (higher cost), as well as the actual cost of the search. The next screen will show the deadlines based on your initial entry. For example, one deadline might be “Last court day to accept any offer of monetary judgment (or within 90 days of service, whichever is earlier) or of-fer deemed withdrawn. R. 4:58-1b.”
At this point, the program can send an e-mail with an iCalendar attachment of the deadlines that can be imported directly into Microsoft Outlook as well as legal practice management programs including Time Matters. There’s built-in integration between Amicus Attorney and Deadlines on Demand. On the screen that lists the dates, description of the deadline and statutory authority information, you can choose to include or exclude some of those remind-ers from the e-mail file. Additionally, you have the option to print the deadline list or export the data into a comma-separated format that can be opened in a spread-sheet like Microsoft Excel or Corel’s Quatto Pro.
You also have the option to view previous searches.
Every state has unique holidays such as Patriots Day in Massachusetts. After Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana established “hurricane” and “non-hurricane” rules to handle future emergencies that could disrupt the courts and legal system. DOD’s court rules databases include all federal and local holidays. Its change notification service (CNS) alerts users of recent court rules updates that might impact their calendared deadlines at no additional charge. This service automatically sends an e-mail to DOD users when rule changes impact one or more of the deadlines created by their DOD date calculations. CNS also provides a convenient link to rerun each search affected.
While there are smaller companies and options for tracking litigation deadlines, Deadlines on Demand is simple and affordable. No matter how small or large the case, there’s comfort knowing DOD is watching your back and helping meet your case deadlines.
