27 May 2011

Lexis Nexis File and Serve Hell!

There are wonderful things about e-filing. You can file documents long after courts close from the comfort of your office. The amount of paper shipped across the country is far less and this removed the drudgery of copying and mailing vast volumes of legal documents to lots of people.

But, it also is utterly incompetent in a variety of common scenarios. For example, the system simply cannot comprehend that a lawyer migth be signing pleadings for more than one law firm at a time, despite the fact that it is permitted and that there are many circumstances where it comes up.

Equally frustrating is their inconstant approach to security. Anyone claiming without any substantiation to be a law firm IT administrator can change the firm, e-mail account and password assigned to a e-file account without even talking to a real human being, and without notice to the old account e-mail address. But, lawyer himself or herself doesn't have the authority to do these things and isn't contacted about them, and must concoct complex and hence difficult to remember passwords to the account.

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