Even in counties and states where electronic court filing has yet to take hold, legal support professionals aren’t tied to the same routines and traditions that once dictated their time and energy.
One Legal was created after our founder successfully lobbied the California courts to accept legal documents sent via fax, nearly 30 years ago.
Ever since it became accepted practice across the country to accept most legal documents without requiring a wet signature—first through fax and later through electronic transmission, paralegals and legal secretaries have had another option.
What is a court filing service provider?
Unlike the conventional court runners who must travel back and forth between the brick and mortar law firm and the courthouse, a court filing service provider delivers paper documents to courts that require them without ever needing to step foot in your office.
How it works:
- Filers upload digital copies of their legal documents to a secure, streamlined portal
- Document experts from the court filing service provider print, assemble, review, and deliver the filing to the court.
- Track the status of your order on our filing portal with just a click.
#1 Assembling and managing papers
One Legal’s platform was designed by and for legal professionals. With our system, even users in non-eFiling state courts can file court documents from their own computer desktop.
The document experts at One Legal print, assemble, review, and deliver every filing to the court window on your behalf. You’ll see reduced time and cost spent on organizing papers, copying, and envelopes, plus the real cost of the time spent collating, mailing, and filing through traditional methods translates into significant savings for your firm.
#2 Additional oversight
Every paper filing submitted through One Legal benefits from an extra review conducted by our document specialists. No court runner is taking the time to double check the papers, they are taking the envelope and passing it right along.
Wrong court location listed? Incorrect case number? Forgotten signature? We catch a number of common mistakes to save you from a costly rejection.
#3 Less printing and reprinting
Ever printed out a final, final version of a document only to spot a glaring typo on the first page? With all the collaborating and editing that goes into perfecting a legal document, the versions are liable to pile up. But when using a court filing service, you can easily address the issue, save the document, and resume your filing.
Research has found that the average law firm uses 20,000 to 100,000 sheets of paper per lawyer per year. Court filing services eliminate the need for all that printing, searching and finding errors, revising the document, reprinting, changing something else, printing it again, etc. Just upload your digital files and we’ll take it from there.
No wonder paperless law offices and electronic filing processes are revolutionizing the legal industry.
#4 No waiting—for the court runner or at the window
If handing an original pleading off to a court runner for filing gives you pause, you should know that with online court filing services, your documents are completely traceable from the moment they leave your office to the moment they reach the court and opposing counsel.
Not to mention that a single pick up is rarely sufficient. What if you’re not ready to file at the 10 a.m.? No more working off of someone’s schedule, you can base your filings off your own.
One Legal even provides customers with a courtesy email when their document reaches its destination. Who wouldn’t choose that convenience over worrying about whether your court runner got stuck in traffic?
#5 Headstart on eFiling
When you use a court filing service provider that also happens to be an electronic filing service provider (EFSP), you’re partnering with a company on the inside track. Whether your court is contemplating eFiling in the next year or the next five years, it’s a practice that is inevitable for the industry, and it’s never too soon to start getting prepared.
Using an online platform to file prior to this change gives you a chance to establish best practices of working with digital documents and familiarize yourself with the process.
EFSPs like One Legal also keep you in the loop when your court is preparing to transition. With free trainings, insight into unique rules, comprehensive guides and content, and a direct line to the work happening behind the scenes, One Legal strives to be an asset to every law firm no matter what the filing process is at the time.
Whether you’ve been waiting for the final push to level up your court filing services, or you didn’t know all the options out there, we’re confident that the benefits of using One Legal could be a gamechanger for your firm.
