GENERAL INFO.		The Notice of Electronic Filing screen is generated immediately after the filing of a document is complete. The Notice of Electronic Filing is the verification that the filing has been sent electronically to the court’s database. It certifies that the pleading is now an official court document. It is also sent out by e-mail to all parties to the case (and some other registered users by request) for whom the court has an e-mail address. As a result of December 2001 amendments to the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedures, it is sufficient service of a pleading (except Service of Process) to anyone who has consented to electronic service. All certified users of the CM/ECF system in the USBC for the EDKY have consented to electronic service when they completed the registration form. Some registered users can subscribe to receive e-mail notification of any filing in any case within the district. These notices can be monitored throughout the day, or users can request a daily summary of the activity in all the cases in which they are parties, or have requested notice.
PAPER NOTICES		The court’s Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC) will still continue to send by regular US Mail the same main bankruptcy notices (such as 341 meeting notices) that they have in the past, even if the “Notice of Electronic Filing” contains similar information.
VIEWING THE NOTICE OF ELEC- TRONIC FILING		Your first view of the “Notice of Electronic Filing” is when it displays immediately after you complete the final screen when filing your pleading. As a registered user who represents a party in the case, you will also receive a copy by e-mail of each individual “Notice of Electronic Filing” or a daily summary. These notices will not be sent retroactively from the beginning of the case. You will receive them prospectively from the time you enter the case. If you have opted for an end of day summary, you will receive e-mail each day (unless there is no activity in any of your cases) with a summary of all the activity for the day in any case where you represent a client or have requested notice. Access to this notice is also available from a docket sheet, but there will be a PACER fee charged.
SAMPLE NOTICE OF ELEC- TRONIC FILING WHEN GENERATED IMMEDIATELY AFTER PETITION IS FILED		NOTE: As the filer of the pleading, you get NO “free peeks” on the notice which is displayed immediately after you complete the filing of your pleading. (See further information about “free peeks” in the descriptions below.) However, when you receive this same notice in your e-mail, then, as an e-mail recipient, you would get a “free peek” if you needed to look at the document you filed with the court.
Within the “Notice of Electronic Filing”, there is a “Notice of Bankruptcy Case Filing”		There is a hyperlink near the top of the “Notice of Electronic Filing” which is generated immediately after a “Voluntary Petition” is filed. Clicking on this hyperlink will take you to the “special” notice shown below (after you enter your PACER login). There is never a “free peek” provided for this document. Also, this notice is only accessible while you are still in the court system immediately after filing the bankruptcy petition or through “Query”. When you receive the “Notice of Electronic Filing” of the bankruptcy case in your e-mail, the “Notice of Bankruptcy Case Filing” will not be a hyperlink. NOTE: This is NOT the “Notice of Electronic Filing”, but a separate notice, which can be accessed through the “Notice of Electronic Filing”. It can be saved or printed (if needed). It can be used as an official notice of stay to stop foreclosures and other creditor actions prior to receiving the “Notice of Bankruptcy Case, Meeting of Creditors, and Deadlines” by mail. This notice summarizes the pertinent details and participants of the case. The seal has both a date and a time of filing when an attorney electronically files a petition. NOTE: PACER billing information (not shown here) is provided at the bottom of the screen.
FUTURE ACCESS TO NOTICE OF BK CASE FILING		This “Notice of Bankruptcy Case Filing” is also available for later viewing or printing through the “Query” hyperlink on the CM/ECF Main Menu bar.
SAMPLE NOTICE OF ELEC- TRONIC FILING WHEN RECEIVED VIA E-MAIL		As an e-mail recipient of notices, you should be able to get at least one “free peek” at the document that was filed. (See further information about “free peeks” in the descriptions set out below.) NOTE: The words, , are not a hyperlink to the other “special” notice. There is no access to this notice from your e-mail.
FREE PEEK AT PLEADING PROVIDED		The first line of information informs the e-mail recipient of their right to “one free peek”. This is a little misleading because although there are 2 and sometimes 3 hyperlinks on a notice, the only free peek is at the document filed, by clicking on the document number hyperlink. Also, this free peek is only available for the first 30 days after a pleading is filed. If you have not read your e-mail for over 30 days, you may have lost your “free peek” at some pleadings. IMPORTANT OFFICE PROCEDURE TIP: The “free peek” may only be free once. When you open the same e-mail later, the message above may no longer display and, if so, when you click on the document number, a PACER login screen will pop up. So, you may want to set up a special e-mail address for these notices where a specific person in the office opens, views, saves and/or prints the notices and pleadings. NOTE: If you do not click on the document number (because it is a document you filed), after saving or printing the notice, you can forward the e-mail to your client and they will be able to get a “free peek” at the pleading you filed on their behalf. NOTE: By printing and/or saving the notice and pleading the first time you view it, you can always get free access in the future. See instructions below regarding viewing and printing and/or saving the “Notice of Electronic Filing” and regarding viewing and printing and/or saving the associated pleading (if any).
INFO. RE: WHO FILED PLEADING AND WHEN IT WAS FILED		The next line of information is about who filed the pleading and the date and time it was filed. NOTE: This is what a “FILED” stamp now looks like. If you are used to mailing your clients “Filed”-stamped copies of the pleadings that you file on their behalf, you may need to educate your clients regarding the new type of “Filed” stamp. You could print this screen and mail a copy of it to your client instead of what you mailed in the past, or you could print this screen and staple it to a copy of the pleading you filed and mail it to the client. Also, see the “NOTE:” in the previous section regarding forwarding e-mail to clients.
LAST MINUTE FILING		Technically, if you have a deadline to file something by today’s date, you have until 11:59 and 59 seconds to file that pleading and it will still be timely filed. However, DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE !! A number of problems could arise if you wait. Your computer could crash. Your connection to the Internet could go down or be too slow. The court’s connection to the Internet could be down. CM/ECF itself could be down. See the new “Administrative Procedures Manual” (Section II J) for further information on late filing due to technical difficulties.
CASE NAME AND CASE NUMBER INFO.		The case name and the case number follow next. NOTE: The case name does not include any “Edit Party Text” that was added regarding a debtor. Examples of “Edit Party Text” are “a Kentucky Corporation” or “Executor for the Estate of…”. NOTE: If you filed a “Petition” or an adversary “Complaint”, this will be the first chance you will have to see the case number assigned to the case, so it is important to make a note of it. NOTE: If you click on the case number hyperlink, a docket report will be generated for the case, after you have entered your PACER login.
DOCUMENT NUMBER		The document number is also a hyperlink. Clicking on the document number in the “Notice of Electronic Filing” that you receive via e-mail, gives the “one free peek” at the .pdf image of the pleading filed.
DOCUMENT NUMBERS WITHOUT HYPERLINKS		Sometimes the document number will NOT be a hyperlink. In the example below, the document is not a hyperlink because there is no .pdf image. The notice itself is a “virtual” pleading because the complete text of the conventional paper document is now contained in the e-mail notice. See the separate instructions on “Virtual Pleadings” for further information on that topic. NOTE: A “Notice of Electronic Filing” can also be produced because of a change made to a case record by court staff that is not the result of a pleading being filed. If there is no pleading, then there will be no .pdf documents associated with the transaction. In the example below, the document is not a hyperlink because it is a court entry used to generate the paper notice that is mailed conventionally. To view the notice above (before you receive the paper copy), two days after the request, when you receive the e-mail notification of the “BNC Certificate of Mailing”, you could click on the document number of the “BNC Certificate of Mailing”, and then you could view both the certificate and the notice itself.
DOCUMENT NUMBER HYPERLINK WHEN THERE IS MORE THAN ONE .PDF IMAGE		If a main document with an attachment was filed, when you click on the document number hyperlink, instead of seeing the pleading, the following screen will be displayed. The example below is when a “Motion to Avoid a Lien” was filed along with an attachment – the proposed order.
DOCKET TEXT		The docket text is then displayed.
ASSOCIATED DOCUMENT MESSAGE		The next line is a message describing the information that will appear next on the notice. NOTE: “Associated” is not synonymous with “Attachments”. If a pleading had been filed and if it had any “attachments”, both the main document (the pleading) and all the “attached” documents would be listed below.
PATH INFO.		Then the paths and document/security stamps of any associated documents are shown. This is an example of the path information regarding the “Main Document” (the pleading). This is an example of the path information regarding the attachment. Both of the examples above are information about documents “associated” with the transaction.
EXAMPLE OF ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT/ SECURITY STAMP		This long string of numbers is the “Electronic Document Stamp”. This information is one of the many security measures that are part of CM/ECF. A comparison can be run of the original document stamp and the current document stamp to help prove or disprove allegations that a pleading was altered after filing.
LIST OF WHO WAS SERVED VIA E-MAIL		Near the bottom of the “Electronic Notice of Filing”, there is a list of persons who received an electronic copy of the notice.
LIST OF WHO WAS NOT SERVED VIA E-MAIL		At the very end of the notice, there is a list of those parties who did not receive an e-mail containing the “Notice of Electronic Filing”. This example shows an attorney who is not a certified CM/ECF filer yet, so the court does not have her e-mail address in the system. If you are legally required to serve this party, you will have to send a paper copy of the pleading to this party and then electronically file a “Certificate of Service” with the court showing that this party was served in a traditional manner (usually through the US mail). See the separate instructions for filing a “Certificate of Service” electronically. NOTE: There is a difference between creditors listed on the matrix and creditors who have filed a pleading in the case via attorney. NO CREDITOR who has only been listed on the matrix and who has not hired an attorney who has filed a pleading in the case will get this electronic notification. Unfortunately, the list above will not mention that fact or the names and addresses of the creditors on the matrix who did not receive the electronic notification.
EXAMPLE OF NOTICE OF MOTION TO AVOID LIEN WITH ATTACHED PROPOSED ORDER
EXAMPLE OF NOTICE CONTAINING A “VIRTUAL” ORDER		In this example, there is a document number, but it is NOT a hyperlink to a .pdf image because this notice IS the ORDER because this is a VIRTUAL ORDER. See the separate instructions on “Virtual Pleadings” for further information on that topic. NOTE THIS LANGUAGE!!
EXAMPLE OF NOTICE OF ELECTRONIC “BATCH” FILING		This is not currently set up in the USBC EDKY, so examples will not be provided.
EXAMPLE OF NOTICE OF ELECTRONIC “MULTI-CASE” FILING		This is not currently set up in the USBC EDKY, so examples will not be provided.
Clicking on the bankruptcy case no. will allow you to view/print the docket sheet of the bk case (after entering PACER login info.) EXAMPLE OF NOTICE OF ELEC- TRONIC FILING PRODUCED AFTER AN ADVERSARY PROCEEDING IS FILED		This “Notice of Electronic Filing” varies somewhat from other examples. It includes a hyperlink to the adversary proceeding number and a hyperlink to the main bankruptcy case number. There are two different document number hyperlinks. The “Complaint” is copied to the main case, so the “Complaint” is assigned a document number in the adversary (always 1) and it will also receive a document number in the main bankruptcy case. Two electronic file stamps are also created. Clicking the adversary proceeding no. will allow you to view/print the docket sheet of the adversary (after entering PACER login info.) Clicking either document no. will allow access to the “Complaint” that was filed. This is the document stamp for the “Complaint” in the adversary This is the document stamp for the “Complaint” in the main bankruptcy case.
OTHER ADVERSARY NOTICE DIFFERENCES		Since “Complaints” spread over to the bankruptcy case and since the filing of an adversary proceeding can greatly impact the parties in the bankruptcy, e-mail notification of the filing of the “Complaint” is given to all “party filers” in both the adversary proceeding and in the main bankruptcy case. Thus, in the example shown above, you can see that there are two lists of those who received and those who did not receive e-mail notification. The first list is regarding the adversary proceeding parties. The second list is regarding the main bankruptcy case parties.
EXAMPLE OF NOTICE OF ELEC- TRONIC CLAIMS FILING		In this example, clicking on the “Claim Number” hyperlink would allow you to view/print the Proof of Claim form and any supporting documentation (up to 50 pages)
EXAMPLE OF NOTICE OF ELEC- TRONIC CLAIMS FILING WHEN CLAIM HAS MORE THAN 50 PAGES OF SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
EXAMPLE OF MULTIPLE DOCUMENTS SELECTION SCREEN		When the “Claim Number” hyperlink is clicked in the above situation, the following screen will display. Except for the description of the “attachment”, this screen is identical to the one shown previously. Clicking on the “1” Main Document hyperlink will allow you to view and print/save the Proof of Claim form and its supporting evidence (up to a total of 50 pages). Clicking on the “2” hyperlink will allow you to view and print/save pages 51-100 of the supporting evidence.
EXAMPLE OF SUMMARY E-MAIL NOTICE		If you prefer not to receive each individual “Notice of Electronic Filing”, you can opt to receive “Summary Notice”. This is an example of what a “Summary” e-mail would look like. The recipient in this example happens to use “Lotus Notes” as her e-mail product, but your summary notice should be similar no matter what e-mail product you are using. NOTE: The “Daily Summary” notice does not contain information about who filed the pleading and the time it was filed, nor does it provide any information on who was served and who was not served. Also, it does not include the document/security stamp information. This kind of information is available on the individual e-mail notifications. Clicking on the document numbers will allow you to have one “free peek” at each document filed. See the next example for information on the results of clicking on the case number and title.
CASE NO. HYPERLINKS IN A NOTICE		Clicking on the case number and title hyperlink in a “Notice of Electronic Filing” or the “Summary Notice” shown above will open a PACER login window. This window will require you to enter your PACER login and password before viewing the docket sheet and there will be a PACER fee charged to view the docket sheet.
PRINTING AND SAVING NOTICES AND/OR PLEADINGS		NOTE: It is recommended that these notices, and/or the pleadings that they provide hyperlinks to, be saved and/or printed by the e-mail recipient during the “free peek”. This way, any need to review the information in the future will also be free since you have the information stored on your own office’s computer/filing cabinet. Click on the icon to print the “Notice of Electronic Filing” and/or the pleading you are viewing. To save a copy of the “Notice of Electronic Filing” and/or the pleading you are viewing, click “File” on the program’s menu bar. Then, select “Save As” or “Save Frame As” or “Save Target As” and save to any drive you wish on your computer. Save the file using any name you wish.
FUTURE ACCESS TO THE NOTICE OF ELEC- TRONIC FILING		If you did not save and/or print the “Notice of Electronic Filing”, future access to the “Notice of Electronic Filing” is available through the electronic docket report. Click in the square next to to put a check mark in the box. When this option is selected, a silver bullet appears next to the document number of the pleading. Clicking the silver bullet will display the notice, but you will be incurring PACER viewing/printing charges.
ACCEPT OR REJECT PACER CHARGES SCREEN		If you have lost your “free peek”, a PACER login screen will display when you click on a document number. After entering your PACER login and password, a screen similar to the one below will display. This gives you the opportunity to change your mind if you do not want to incur PACER charges.
MANAGING YOUR E-MAIL FROM THE COURT		When you first start receiving the e-mail from the court, it may feel somewhat overwhelming. There are several ways in which you can “manage” your e-mail. Many law firms are setting up a separate e-mail address for court e-mail. Then someone on the attorney’s staff goes into that in-box once or twice a day and does any necessary printing, saving, and forwarding of e-mails. Just like someone on the staff probably opened and routed the physical mail in the past. Another option for those who are comfortable with computers (or for those who have a Systems person who can set it up) is to use your e-mail program’s filter features. Most e-mail programs have a way to sort e-mail. Some programs like Microsoft Outlook call these “Rules”. Other e-mail programs call these “Filters”. In most e-mail programs, “Rules” or “Filters” can be used to sort e-mail into different folders or they can be used to delete certain e-mail. For example, if you do not want to receive the court’s e-mail that tells you that you filed a pleading because you already know that you filed it, you could set up your e-mail system to automatically route that e-mail to the “Delete” folder. A creditor’s attorney who no longer wants to receive e-mail from the court in a particular case, could set up a “Rule” or “Filter” to route e-mail (from the court) about that case to the “Delete” folder. NOTE: Be very careful if you choose to use “Rules” or “Filters” that you have tested them thoroughly before you activate them. You may want to set up your “Delete” folder so that it doesn’t automatically delete items, but has to be manually “emptied”. This way you would have the ability to retrieve an e-mail that was routed improperly because the rule or filter wasn’t set up correctly.
E-MAIL PROBLEMS		If you aren’t receiving your e-mail from the court, please contact our Technical Help Desk at (859) 233-2608 Ext. 273. Prior to calling the Technical Help Desk, you may be able to resolve the problem with the following information. Ø Some e-mail services, such as AOL and Hotmail have “spam” filters which try to find and reject junk mail. Unfortunately, if your service has a “spam” filter, it may think that court e-mail is spam. Check with your e-mail provider regarding the spam filter settings to see if the problem can be resolved. Ø Some e-mail services have limits on the size of your e-mail mailbox. Once you have reached your limit, your mailbox will no longer accept any more e-mail. It also may not let you know that it is rejecting e-mail because it is full. You may need to establish a system for archiving older e-mail to create space in your mailbox. You can also contact your e-mail provider to see if size limitations can be removed or increased. Ø Court e-mail will be rejected if you have an “Out of Office” message setup. Since it is nice to be able to use that message, you may want to consider setting up a separate e-mail address for court e-mail notices. This way you can still use the “Out of Office” message, when applicable, in your normal e-mail mailbox.