If not done right, e-filing could hurt more than help.

Shifting Florida courts to electronic filing and record-keeping could offer a path to a more efficient court system for parties, judges, lawyers, and clerks.

If it works.

If it doesn't, it might be a confusing system that baffles lawyers. Parties could find personal, confidential, and sensitive information that was supposed to be protected published on the Internet. Judges could find their decisionmaking hampered and slowed down by massive electronic files that are difficult to navigate. Vindictive pro se litigants could use an electronic filing system to plant false, scurrilous, and malicious information about perceived enemies, and then the power of the Internet to broadcast the slanders, citing "official" court files.

Those were a sample of the contrasts, sometimes dazzling, presented January 25 at the Young Lawyers Division's annual Government Symposium, held at the Bar's Midyear Meeting in Orlando.

The topic this year was electronic filing, both where the state is on implementing an e-filing system (mandated last year by the Legislature) and what lawyers need to know about it.

"E-filing is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when," YLD President R.J. Haughey said in opening the symposium.

The panel, moderated by YLD Board of Governors member Chelsie Roberts, consisted of:

* Two judges, 11th Circuit Judge Judith Kreeger, chair of the Florida Courts Technology Commission, and 12th Circuit Chief Judge Lee Haworth.

* Two court clerks, Sarasota Clerk of Court Karen Rushing, chair of the Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers Legislation Committee, and Orange County Clerk of Court Lydia Gardner. Both Gardner and Rushing are using electronic filing for some cases and are keeping electronic records of court cases.

* Two lawyers, Bar Board of Governors member Murray Silverstein, who serves on the FCTC, and Ft. Lauderdale attorney Paul Regensdorf, who is pushing a procedural rule change mandating e-mail document service between lawyers (see story on page 1).

They alternatively painted a bright and dark picture for an electronic filing system. It could improve public access to court records and boost the efficiency of the court system at a time of tight budgets. Alternatively, if improperly implemented, it could confuse lawyers, reveal confidential and private information that should have been sealed, and actually slow the work of judges.

Kreeger, a family court judge, gave an example of the latter. She noted documents and exhibits...