Frequently Asked Questions - ECF | District of Arizona (2024)

No.

Yes, in part. Effective 12/1/16, Rule 6(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was amended to remove service by electronic means under Rule 5(b)(2)(E) from the modes of service that allow 3 added days to act after being served. Rule 6(d) now says: "When a party may or must act within a specified time after being served and service is made under Rule 5(b)(2)(C) (mail), (D) (leaving with the clerk), or (F) (other means consented to), 3 days are added after the period would otherwise expire under Rule 6(a)". Three (3) days are no longer added when service has been accomplished by electronic means. If a party is not served electronically, then the 3-day mailing time would still apply.

Electronically submitted orders must be included as separate attachment to the motion or stipulation. Following the filing of the motion or stipulation, a proposed order in WordPerfect or MS Word format and pdf version of the motion or stipulation must immediately be sent to the court in a separate, non-ECF generated e-mail message. The proposed order must not contain any form of signature line or block for the judge. The proposed order, as well as a pdf version of the related motion or stipulation, should be attached to an Internet e-mail message and sent to the e-mail address of the assigned judge. The subject line of the message should contain the case number and title of the case, and the text of the message should reference the document number assigned to the motion or stipulation assigned by the ECF system when it was electronically filed. A typical e-mail message subject line would appear as follows: "Proposed Order in 2:05cv12345 Smith vs. Jones, et al." under Section II.G.1.c. of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual.

You may check to see if a person is a registered user by going to "UTILITIES" and clicking on "MAILINGS", "MAILING INFO FOR A CASE." After entering the case number, the ECF system will display how each party will receive notice of electronic filings. The information will include their e-mail address or mailing address.

In order to confirm that the user is the attorney of record in a Social Security or criminal case, the user must enter ECF login and password (not PACER) when the login screen appears to view the document via the Notice of Electronic Filing.

Effective, Monday, December 1, 2014, all presentence disclosures made by the Probation Office in criminal cases assigned will be accomplished through CM/ECF. SECRIS will no longer be used to disclose documents. The notice of assignment, initial disclosures, as well as the final presentence report, will be docketed in ECF and counsel will receive a NEF (notice of electronic filing) when the documents are filed. Because most of these documents are sealed, counsel must access their copies through ECF, as they will not be available in PACER. Click here for instructions on opening these documents.

The entire group of exhibits may be submitted as one attachment to the document but must not exceed ten (10) megabytes with a resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi). The first page of the attachment should be an index of the attached exhibits. The number of attachment associated with a single entry shall not exceed ten (10). Please see Part II, Section K of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual.

Out of state attorneys who wish to appear in this district must submit a formal application to appear pro hac vice. For a copy of the application form and detailed instructions on appearing pro hac vice in the District of Arizona, please click here to visit the Attorney Information section.

A summons for each defendant (excluding fictitious parties) in civil actions can be submitted for issuance after receiving notice confirming a civil case number and judge assignment. Attach the summons to the “Summons Submitted” event located in the “Service of Process” category. The Clerk will issue each summons and return them to the filer electronically.

Paper courtesy copies for the judge are required for certain document types as listed under Section II.D.3. of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual. To verify electronic filing, the Notice of Electronic Filing must be appended to the last page of the courtesy copy. The courtesy copy must be either post-marked and mailed directly to the judge or hand-delivered to the judge's mail box located in the courthouse by the next business day after the electronic filing. Courtesy copies are to be provided in paper form only and should not be e-mailed. For further information, please reference Part II, Section D of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual.

Section II.C.3. of the Administrative Manual addresses multiple signatures on stipulations and other papers. Specifically, the filer of any document requiring more than one signature must certify that the content of the document is acceptable to all persons required to sign the document by obtaining either physical or facsimile signatures, or authorization for the electronic signatures of all parties on the document. If physical or facsimile signatures are used, the document must be scanned and electronically filed in PDF. If electronic signatures are to be used, the signatories should appear as "s/Jane Doe," "s/John Smith," etc. for each electronic signature.

Often the print settings within Adobe Acrobat are set such that print scaling enabled. Print scaling will shrink the printed content of a PDF document so that a "best fit" on paper is achieved, and this often results in a visually reduced font size when the PDF document is printed to paper. In order to print a PDF document such that the font size matches that of the original document, you will need to disable print scaling within Adobe Acrobat. To do this, when attempting to print a PDF document that is being viewed in ECF, from the printing dialog window change the setting that appears in the "Page Scaling" field (this is found within the "Page Handling" section of the printing dialog window) to read "None", and then click on "OK" to print the document. Once the print settings are changed so that print scaling is disabled, Acrobat will "remember" this setting such that it does not need to be selected in the future.

No. You must have a software product that produces pdf files that are compatible with Adobe Acrobat 4.0 and above in order to e-file in ECF.

The system will "time out" after a designated period of time. If you are attempting to file a document with multiple attachments, the transaction may take longer than this designated time. You can minimize this by reducing the resolution of your documents and/or combining the attachments into larger files, not to exceed ten (10) megabytes. The number of attachments associated with a single entry shall not exceed ten (10). Please see Part II, Section K of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual.

As long as the software product is compatible with Acrobat 4.0 and above, there should be no problem with using the software to convert documents to pdf for eventual e-filing.

No certificate of service is required when a paper is served by filing it with the court’s electronic-filing system. When a paper that is required to be served is served by other means, a certificate of service must be included with it or filed within a reasonable time after service. See Section II.D.3. of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual for more information.

Logins and passwords in ECF are case-sensitive. Be sure to enter your ECF login and password exactly as it was issued to you via e-mail by the Court. Also, if you are e-filing, be sure to enter your ECF login and password, not your PACER password. The PACER password will not allow you to e-file.

The electronic filing system for U.S. District Court is separate from U.S. Bankruptcy Court and, therefore, a separate login and password are required. Your PACER account can be the same.

ECF Document Scanning Tips NOTE: Per LRCiv 7.1(c) and the District of Arizona ECF Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual, only those documents which exist only in paper form are to be scanned into PDF format prior to e-filing. All other documents must be converted to PDF directly from a word processing program, and be text searchable. 1. Use 300 dpi resolution for scanning documents. 2. Set image type to black and white bitmap, text (image only), or line art. 3. Do not use Textbridge or OCR software, which scan the document to find alterations or to recognize words for later word processing. For filing purposes, we need only an image of the document. 4. Use black ink if possible. Blue ink and pencil do not scan well. If necessary, make a copy of the document before scanning it, and darken with the copy machine settings. 5. Request depositions on portable media (such as a floppy disk, CD, or flash drive) and convert them to PDF using a word processor. 6. Use PDF writer software such as Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional on the scanning computer to simplify the scanning process. In Acrobat, scan documents directly to PDF files by clicking File...Create PDF...From Scanner from the menu bar, or Create PDF...From Scanner from the tool bar (Acrobat 6/7/8), or File...Import...Scan from the menu bar (Acrobat 5). 7. Check the size of a scanned document before uploading it to CM/ECF. The size limit is 10 MB (ten megabytes, or 10000 KB) per document. To check the file size, locate the file in Windows Explorer and either right-click on the file and choose Properties, or hold your mouse cursor on the file name and it will display the size after about a half a second. If you use Adobe Acrobat to create the PDF file, with the file open in Acrobat, press Control-D to view the file size on the Acrobat document properties screen. 8. Estimated number of pages in a 10 MB scanned document: a. Plain text, correspondence, pleadings, etc. 60-250 pages b. Tables, charts, extensive graphics 8-40 pages c. Condensed transcripts 20-30 pages 9. If a scanned document is larger than 10 MB, use PDF writer software such as Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional to extract/remove pages from the document to a separate file, resulting in two files. This prevents re-scanning the document.

ECF users in the District of Arizona have the capability to search for filing events. The Event and Menu Search utility, labeled Search, is available from the main blue menu bar. When clicked, a small pop-up window appears, and the user can enter text for searching. Once the user enters text in the search box and clicks the Search button (or Enter on the keyboard) the results are displayed on the screen, with the search string characters highlighted. Each item is a hyperlink to the corresponding menu item or event, so the user can access the menu item or event directly from the search results screen. The search function ignores the order of the words entered for searching. For example, search for “amended notice of appeal” will find event Notice of Appeal - Amended. In general, the less text entered in the search box, the more events and/or categories will display in the search results screen. Note: The Search functionality is available for ECF users only (not PACER users).

This screen allows you link to the document you are filing to a previously filed, related document. By clicking the box next to "Refer to existing event(s)?" the system will provide a list of documents already filed in the case. You can narrow that search by entering a date or document number range. You would then click the box next to the document you wish to link to. You may bypass this screen if there are no previously filed documents to which your filing relates.

Documents can be filed as late as midnight, Arizona time.

All registered users of the ECF system are reminded that the e-mail boxes designated for each judicial officer are to be used exclusively for lawyers to e-mail proposed orders in accordance with Section II.G.1.c., of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual. Absolutely no other form of communication should be directed to the court via the chambers e-mailbox.
Registered users are also reminded that, pursuant to Section II.D.3. of the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual, courtesy copies of certain filings must be submitted to the court in paper form, and may not be e-mailed to the court. Mailing addresses for all judicial officers may be found on our website.