Sacks Tierney saves time and effort, avoids hiring an extra position thanks to ECFX automation

The time to manually process electronic court filing (ECF) notices can be overwhelming and costly, especially for a small group with no dedicated docketing or file clerk.

Sacks Tierney implemented ECFX to streamline their process, set up standardized abbreviations—saving them 4hrs/week per case, allowing them to avoid hiring a full-time employee to process ECF notices.

Client:

Sacks Tierney

Website:

www.sackstierney.com

Practice Area:

Bankruptcy

Tech Stack:

iManage (DMS)

Litigators on Platform:

Five

Challenges for a Small Group

During the pandemic, Sacks Tierney administrator Diane Morey took on the project to reduce manual processes and avoid hiring a FT clerk. She came to ECFX looking for a better way to process ECF notices.

As a small bankruptcy group, Sacks Tierney consists of five attorneys, one paralegal, and two legal assistants.

Bankruptcy law generates a large volume of ECF notices, each of which includes many documents to process. Without a dedicated docketing or filing clerk, management of incoming notices had been delegated to the Group’s legal assistants and junior paralegals.

The manual workflow per notice was time-consuming and complex. There was also risk for human error, with the potential for files to be named incorrectly or saved in the wrong location.

They automated tedious manual processing:

ECF documents are immediately filed by ECFX in iManage and available for viewing after receipt from PACER.

They eliminated processing delays:

Routing ECF documents in PDF format are delivered to the attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants associated with the case concurrently when filed in iManage.

They saved time by automatically combining documents:

ECFX automatically combines documents for ECFs delivered with multiple pleadings and attachments, saving significant time when preparing to file the combined document in iManage or send the document to the team or to the client.

They’re mitigating risk with customized naming conventions:

ECFX allows the Group to set up customized naming conventions, including length of name, document id, and abbreviations [such as NOLPO for Notice of Lodging Proposed Order], eliminating the task of manually naming the document for filing in iManage.

1

Case

80

ECF notices

8-10 min/ea

Manual processing

4hrs/week

Time saved with ECFX per case

ECFX Notice helped the small Bankruptcy Group save hundreds of hours across multiple cases, and eliminated the need for a dedicated docketing or filing clerk.

They realized additional savings, since attorneys and paralegals can instantly review the ECF PDF document, versus spending non-billable time opening the in PACER to review or save.

By avoiding manual processing, they eliminated the duplication of saving PDFs locally and the follow-up task of deleting those files.

The Group is in the process of setting up a Sharefile account for each of their clients.

ECFX will automatically and immediately populate the client’s Sharefile account with the ECF PDFs when delivered from PACER.

The Group will be notified automatically by Sharefile when documents are added to the account.

This process will eliminate the need for manual delivery of ECF PDFs to the client and will allow the client to review the case file by simply accessing the Sharefile link without requiring the client to store and manage ECF PDFs on its system.

This will also ensure that all clients will receive consistent communications from our Group in a format with easy access.