Links in Electronic Court Filings

Many courts have rules restricting the links that can be included in electronic court filings. The United States District Court for the District of Nebraska has posted the Attorney Guide to Hyperlinking in the Federal Courts to its site. The first section of the guide states that the only permissible hyperlinks in court filings are:

1. Links to different sections of the filing itself. E.g., from the Table of Contents to section headings.

2. Links to prior ECF filings.

3. Links to exhibits filed with a brief.

4. Links to cases and statutes.

5. Links to local rules.

The guide specifically states that, "A hyperlink to a public website where evidence can be found is not a substitute for filing evidence in support of a motion."

The District of Minnesota's Guide to Using Cross-Document Hyperlinks in CM/ECF notes that documents can be filed with links to ECF filings from the same case or other cases on the CM/ECF system, and contains instructions on how to create such links.

In 2013, Michael Dunbar prepared a compilation of federal court rules on hyperlinks in court filings, Hyperlinking: Electronic Submissions in the Federal Courts for the District of Kansas. In this comprehensive, but slightly out of date guide, we learn that the Local Appellate Rules for the Third Circuit specify that, ". . . the hyperlink and the site to which it refers are not considered part of the brief. Thus, they will not be considered part of the court’s record."

The Electronic Case Filing Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual for the District of Arizona states that, "A hyperlink reference is extraneous to any filed document and is not part of the court's record. A link to any document that does not reside on the ECF system for the District of Arizona is prohibited."

Attorneys wishing to be meticulous about their court filings may want to employ the "Remove All Links" utility in Adobe Acrobat, in the Document Processing section of Tools.

This will remove in any links inserted with Adobe Acrobat. However when I attempted to use it today on exhibits that contained email addresses and web addresses (listed in emails converted to PDF format) it did not remove those links. Clearly the federal courts want to guard against attorneys submitting briefs which contain links to online documentation that can function as supporting exhibits without being formally submitted as such. Taking the time to actually remove links of any kind may be an unnecessarily laborious process.

Make Your Filings Text Searchable in the Second Circuit

Local Rule 25.1 on Case Management and Electronic Case Filing for the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit states in subsection 3 that, "A PDF must be text-searchable. A PDF need not include a manual signature.".

The Second Circuit is not kidding either. If you fail to make all of your exhibits to a declaration text searchable, expect to receive a Notice of Defective Filing the next morning, with this instruction:

"Please cure the defect(s) and resubmit the document, with the required copies if necessary, no later than [THE SAME DAY OF THE FILING!]. The resubmitted documents, if compliant with FRAP and the Local Rules, will be deemed timely filed. Failure to cure the defect(s) by the date set forth above will result in the document being stricken. An appellant's failure to cure a defective filing may result in the dismissal of the appeal." See the example posted here.

See the Tip of the Night for May 18, 2015, for an automated way to find which PDFs in a large set are not text searchable.

E-Filing in S.D.N.Y.

On March 7, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York updated its Electronic Case Filing Rules & Instructions. The rules specify that any exhibits to a filing, must be filed as an attachment. Rule 13.3 specifically prohibits inserting exhibits behind the main filing in the same PDF. It also specifies a format of the exhibit names:

NOTICE OF REMOVAL (Attachments: #1 State Court Complaint, #2 State Court Summons)

This should really save all of us who have spent hours parsing through PACER docket entries and filings a lot of trouble. If exhibits are listed in a consistent format on PACER dockets it will be easier (and cheaper to search for documents). I have spent a lot of time hunting through summary judgment declaration exhibits for particular expert reports and deposition transcripts. With the rules now stating that, "[e]ach attachment must be clearly titled in the ECF entry so the subject of the exhibit is clear." it should be easy to find what you're looking for.

The new rule will also make it easier to parse through multiple files, easily adding an exhibit number and description different columns on a spreadsheet.