One Legal announced the debut of a new electronic tool for bulk filing court cases on Monday, after successful tests on its first several hundred cases.
Filers in select case types will now be able to file documents en masse, avoiding time-consuming data entry for repetitive document types and content. This new feature is still in beta phase, and only available in select Cook County, Illinois case types, but new courts and capabilities are in the works for the coming months.
Over the last week, One Legal has implemented the tool to successfully eFile two batches of Cook County tax objections. Each batch was accepted by the court within 24-48 hours of uploading, achieving a collective success rate of 100% in the first live tests of the new technology.
“We’re excited about extending our eFiling Platform to enable our customers to eFile large batches in a more efficient and streamlined manner,” said Michael Grow, One Legal’s chief technology officer. “The added benefit is the eFilings are submitted to the clerk sequentially, allowing for review and acceptance of the eFilings within the same timeframe.”
Bulk filing vs. standard electronic filing of court documents
Most Illinois eFiling service providers only allow users to submit filings one by one through a guided online workflow. While this method works well for most filing types, it can be very time-consuming for law firms that submit tax objections—hundreds of substantially similar filings at the same time of the year with only a few differentiations between clients. This means that the majority of their work must be repeated over and over again unnecessarily.
To solve this problem, One Legal created a feature that allows filers to prepare the necessary information for hundreds—or potentially even thousands—of filings all in a single spreadsheet. Fields that stay the same can be copied down the spreadsheet, saving hours of manual work.
This spreadsheet and the necessary court documents are then uploaded to a secure website and analyzed by One Legal’s proprietary bulk filing processor for potential errors. When all errors are corrected, the filings are delivered electronically to County Division, and their status can be tracked using a free One Legal account.
More savings for each additional document filed
One Legal’s bulk filing service, which includes consultations with a dedicated bulk filing project manager, is available during its beta phase for a flat fee of $500 per month, per case type. Because One Legal no longer assesses a fee per document filed in Illinois, Chicago-area tax firms can make hundreds or even thousands of filings at a perpetually declining cost per document filed.
While the bulk filing tool can currently only be used for tax objection case types in Cook County, Illinois, One Legal plans to expand the use of this technology to additional case types and locations in 2019.
“[The new year] will be all about leveraging our new bulk eFiling capabilities and recent advancements in AI and machine learning to make filing court cases online faster and easier than ever before,” Grow added.
How to start a bulk filing project with One Legal
Visit the bulk filing info page and fill out the form to let us know you’re interested, and include the approximate number of filings you’d like to place. An account manager will get back to you shortly to arrange a time to talk in order to assess your filings and provide detailed instructions for getting started.
