The California Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has chartered "The Second Generation Electronic Filing Standards" (2GEFS). The project’s purpose is to create a new, coherent set of XML Schema and related specifications for court electronic filing and case management systems.

<xmlLegal> delivered XML schema and specifications to California AOC in July 2003. <xmlLegal> is currently providing consulting to the CA AOC and a number of California courts and e-filing projects. Courts and e-filing projects that are implementing 2GEFS include Sacramento Superior Court, San Mateo Superior Court, Contra Costa Superior Court, Santa Clara Superior Court, and the statewide California Case Management System ('CCMS').

Email Christopher Smith at Christopher.Smith@jud.ca.gov, visit the CA AOC electronic court filing website, or click the link below for more information.

2GEFS Information

The 2GEFS Fact Sheet (Free) provides a short and simple overview of the California Second Generation Electronic Filing Specifications ("2GEFS").

The 2GEFS Roadmap (Free) introduces the California Second Generation Electronic Filing Specifications ("2GEFS") Concepts Document, Court Filing 2.0, Court Policy 2.0, Request-Response 2.0, and CMS-API 2.0.

The 2GEFS Lessons Learned Document (Free) is a detailed document about the 2GEFS XML Schema development and validation testing projects. The 2GEFS Lessons Learned document builds on the lessons learned in Georgia Electronic Court Filing Projects.

xmlLegal Schema Framework Reference Documents (Free) is an in-depth look at the <xmlLegal> Schema Framework that describes four example XML Schema and XML instance documents, sometimes called "reference documents." The reference documents include a state police complaint, a juvenile complaint, and a case count report and can be found on this website. The website includes source documents, output documents, XML, XML Schema, schema documentation, data dictionaries, and an example schema repository.

From August 2000 to November 2001, Georgia Courts Automation Commission and Georgia State E-CourT-Filingproject conducted an electronic court filing interoperability pilot project using Legal XML Court Filing 1.0 specification (Free). Lessons Learned I (Free), a document that explains the project, as well as a number of other resources including the project's document type definition are published on the E-CourT-Filingprojectwebsite.

Lessons Learned II (Free) is an update on Georgia Courts Automation Commission's Interoperability Pilot Project. This document also includes information about filing of Georgia Child Support and Juvenile electronic filings. An article titled "Georgia Courts Automation Commission: Juvenile and Child Support Electronic Filing Systems," (Free) in the "e-Filing Report" November, 2003 issue (Vol. 3, No. 10) published by Glasser Legalworks (http://www.legalwks.com/) summarizes the projects. Lessons Learned III (Free) is a more in-depth look at the juvenile and child support projects.

The E-CourT-Filingproject continued its electronic filing project in Douglas County Juvenile Court where XML juvenile documents are filed over the Internet into a case management system.

Live filings of XML documents wrapped in Court Filing XML 1.0 began in May 2002. From January 2003 until September 2003, approximately 900 juvenile complaints were filed from the Douglas County Sheriff's and Police Departments into the Douglas County Juvenile Court. The juvenile complaints are XML documents based on the <xmlLegal>Schema Framework.

The lessons learned documents as well as other project documentation are available on the E-CourT-Filingprojectwebsite. You will need a Georgia State password to access the documentation.

GCAC Juvenile and Child Support Electronic Filing Systems (Free) summarizes Georgia Courts Automation Commission ("GCAC") Juvenile and Child Support Electronic Court Filing Projects. Both projects are offshoots of the 1999-2000 GCAC Interoperability Pilot Project, in which four vendors and three courts used Legal XML Court Filing 1.0 to successfully pass filings among different test systems. Further details about each phase of the project can be found in three lessons learned documents located on the Georgia State University Electronic Court Filing website at http://e-ct-file.gsu.edu/CourtFilings/Interoperability/ or on this website in the Announcements document repository. The third lessons learned documents provides screen shots of the applications used in the projects and described in this article.