eFiling Overview  

Basic Concepts

With users can create paperless documents and submit them to the court electronically. The efiling system also makes it possible for the court to enter a judgment, and the filers that are participating on the case will receive courtesy notices of the judgments as well as courtesy notice of submissions from other filers if you are registered as a participants on the case.

The process is as follows:

  1. A filer (an attorney, for example) creates a submission.
  2. Prior to sending it to the court if there are court fees associated with the submission the filer will be redirected to eGov to make payment.
  3. Once the filer has paid through eGov the process will redirect the filer to the efile system.
  4. The submission will be packaged and sent to the NCAOC. It is time stamped and sent to the Clerk Review queue.
  5. The submission is reviewed by a clerk.
  6. If approved, the clerk will record the information into VCAP, print the documents, and store them in the case file.
  7. The file will receive updates to the status of the submission as it progresses. The "Received" status is the time stamp that will be recorded on the documents if they are in PDF format.
  8. After a submission has been processed, a receipt is returned to the filer and the status is 'Filed'.
  9. If the submission was to initiate a case, then the receipt will include a new case number.
  10. If the submission was rejected the filer should check to see if the clerk entered a message explaining why the submission was rejected.
  11. One reason that may cause a submission to be rejected is if the clerk cannot print the documents or there are viruses in the electronic documents included in the submision.

The efiling system is not a single application, but multiple applications connected by various processes. The diagram below shows where the applications reside in relationship to the firewalls and networks, and how they interact with each other. On the left are components that are external to the court and considered to reside in the public internet space. The area between the two firewalls is the NCAOC DMZ, which is created by the court. This process is similar to what happens with a fax machine.  All information will be manually transferred from the Clerk Review Interface to VCAP, then the documents will be printed.

 

 

What is the Filers Interface?

The Filers Interface is where the filer logs in and creates submissions. Creating a submission means the filer will fill out data on the web and upload documents. When the filer is finished filling out the data and uploading documents, the filer is then asked to review the information. When the filer determines that everything is correct, the filer submits the information. If court fees are required the filer will be redirected to eGov to make payment. The package is then transmited to the Clerk Review Interface, where the submission is time-stamped. It is important that the time-stamp does not occur when the filer presses the submit button but when the package is posted in the Clerk Review queue. The features of the Filers Interface include the following:

What is the Clerk Review process?

The Clerk Review process is where the clerk reviews submissions that have been received from filers. There could be multiple Filers Interfaces that transmit to the Clerk Review. the clerk will print out a listing of the data the filer entered and record that information in the case file. Although the clerk can correct data that the filer entered they will usually not do this and changes must be made as part of due process. The features of the Clerk Review include the following:

What can I eFile?

You can initiate Civil Superior or Special Proceedings/Foreclosure cases, and follow-up filings on cases that have been initiated through the efile system.