E-filing.

I am general counsel for Chips Shore, Manatee County clerk of the circuit court. After working closely with Mr. Shore, he wishes to thank Sen. Ronda Storms for pointing out what he has been agonizing over for years--the painfully slow progress the Florida court system has made toward electronic filing and access to court records.

Mr. Shore's solution is simple: Florida needs to do as the federal courts did years ago. Make e-filing mandatory--period.

The Supreme Court has established e-filing standards for all clerks, and many have obtained court approval to "accept" e-filings. Manatee County has had approval for e-filing since 2004. Our local attorneys have responded well to our "one button" filing. At this time, approximately 50 percent of our filings are by e-filing.

Mr. Shore has experienced resistance while participating in court technology committee meetings on e-filing for almost 12 years and has received consistent push-back from criminal law attorneys speaking of theories of what might go wrong with e-filing.

In Mr. Shore's experience, e-filing and e-access works far better and more efficiently than the paper system and is much safer, because we know where the documents are coming from. In 2008, amidst a storm of foreclosure filings, then 12th Circuit Chief Judge Lee Haworth did a brave thing and mandated e-filing in Manatee and Sarasota counties' foreclosure cases, and an amazing thing happened. Without years of committee meetings, phone conferences, and emails, e-filing became the law in foreclosure cases, and it worked extremely well.

Mr. Shore has listened to hours of conference calls and read hundreds of emails about how sworn and notarized documents should be filed in paper with the clerk (at what we know to cost our office 22 cents per page of paper) then also e-filed because the authenticity of an e-filed affidavit might jeopardize a perjury case, making clerks keep both an electronic record and a paper record. Mr. Shore inquired as to how many perjury cases had actually been filed across the state, and no one has given him an answer.

Mr. Shore also asked how many times the authenticity of a sworn or notarized document is challenged--still no answer.

He has also pointed out that the Supreme Court's own e-filing standards treat any document transmitted electronically as an original for the purposes of the court--no reply. He would also point out a provision for electronic documents in F.S. [section] 92.29; in all cases and in...