E-filing. E-filing was made available in some Utah courts as early as 2010. On July 1, 2012, Utah Code of Judicial Administration Rule 4-503 went into effect, which states in relevant part: "Except as provided in Paragraph (2), pleadings and other papers filed in civil cases in the district court on or after April 1, 2013 shall be electronically filed using the electronic filer�s interface."

Availability of Service. There is no free or court-provided interface to electronic filing in the Utah State Courts. The court does not have technical support staff to provide support specifically for e-Filing issues, although there are some staff in the courts who have some knowledge and training on e-Filing issues. Instead, the courts have opened up the market to providers in the private sector to develop interfaces to the court's e-Filing system and to provide support to their customers. Each provider goes through a testing process to be approved to interface with the courts.

Existing service providers. The first e-Filing service provider to provide services in Utah was Tybera, the same group that contracted with the Utah State Bar to develop the court's back-end interface. Tybera remains involved in testing new e-Filing service providers to this day. Today, the only available e-Filing service providers are (1) Tybera, (2) Green Filing, and (3) JudiciaLink.

Notices from the court. Once an attorney signs up with an e-Filing service provider, the court's profile for that attorney is updated so that the court will send all notices to that attorney through the service. It is left up to the e-Filing service provider to set up the mechanism to forward notices by e-mail or whatever other means is chosen by the provider. As a practical result, although there may be no restriction on an attorney using multiple services at a time, only one of those services can receive notices for an attorney at a time.

JudiciaLink. JudiciaLink was developed by a practicing lawyer in Utah who continues to practice law and use his own system to e-File court documents. JudiciaLink is committed to providing services for the lowest price. As a result, it is anticipated that the users of JudiciaLink will benefit from constant improvement by a lawyer who understands their needs.

Beta-Testing. The purpose of the Beta-Testing period is to prepare the system for release to the public. Changes to the system will be expected and ongoing during the Beta-Testing period, and service interruptions may occur more frequently than will occur once Beta-Testing is completed. Beta-Testers will enjoy the privilege of e-Filing documents for free and downloading documents for free during the entire testing period. The length of the Beta-Testing period is in the sole discretion of JudiciaLink, but is expected to last from several weeks to a month. Once the Beta-Testing period is over, those users wishing to continue to use JudiciaLink must sign up for an account.

Account Options. When the Beta-Testing period ends, JudiciaLink will provide three account options:

Unlimited Account Prepaid Annually - $17.95 per attorney per month (large group discounts also available) Unlimited Account Paid Monthly - $20.00 per attorney per month Pay as You Go Account - $3.50 per filing, $1 per download. * JudiciaLink will match any bona fide published price that is lower than JudiciaLink's published prices.

Customer Service. JudiciaLink's customer service is presently in development. JudiciaLink has begun making arrangements with TeleDirect Call Centers to provide 24-7 customer service, but will not complete the process until there are sufficient customers to justify the cost. It is estimated that 30 - 40 attorney customers will be sufficient to justify this cost. Until that time, JudiciaLink intends to provide responsive customer service, but it may not be available at all hours of the day.