Nevada bankruptcy court tests online filings

Nevada residents and companies may someday be allowed to file for bankruptcy over the Internet.

That service is not yet available, but Nevada is already one of the first states in the West where paper filings in existing bankruptcy cases are being posted on the Internet for any one to see any time.

Since the beginning of the year, U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Las Vegas has been posting scanned images of all Chapter 7 filings on its World Wide Web site, at www.nvb.uscourts.gov. By June 1, the court will post Chapter 11 filings, and by the end of the year, everything filed with the court should appear online.

"Our goal is that by the end of the year, we'll be scanning every pleading, every case, everything," said Vickie Mullings, systems manager at the court.

Already online is basic information about the court, including its address and phone number, and a list of frequently asked questions. The court calendar will be posted within two weeks. One Chapter 11 case, the bankruptcy filing of Arizona Charlie's hotel-casino, has been posted in its entirety as a test of the system.

"We knew it would be a big case, and it would have a lot of public activity," Mullings said.

Court cases are searchable by party name or case number, and access is free for the time being. Mullings said the site has received 3,500 visits, or hits, since January 1.

The reason for posting filings is simple, Mullings said: better customer service.

"It's really just trying to give better public service," Mullings said. "So, now they don't have to come down to the office to get copies."

But posting files online also helps the court. More information online means fewer public court visits, and fewer phone calls. This in turn means court employees can be used for activities other than answering questions and making copies, Mullings said.

The move to the Web is part of a push throughout the Ninth Circuit of federal courts to post all publicly available files online, Mullings said.

"The whole Ninth Circuit has started installing Web pages in their courts," she said.

But an informal survey of several federal court Web sites found that few offer access to all case documents, and most charge for access to any documentation. Many state and federal courts, including all but the Washoe County District Court in Nevada, have no Web site of any kind.

At the moment, Las Vegas bankruptcy court is the only court in the Ninth District offering actual document images on the Web, Mullings said. Other courts offer access to document files, but those files must be downloaded -- copied from the Web to a computer -- before they can be viewed.

The bankruptcy court's files can currently be viewed for no fee. The district's administrative office is studying whether to charge a fee, she said. Other courts charge 60 cents per minute to download documents.

Among the federal courts at least, there will eventually be a nationwide push to get all filings online, Mullings said.

"I think all the courts will eventually go that way," she said.

The delay may largely be due to technical limitations, Mullings explained.

"A lot of the Circuit Courts don't have the firewall set up to do it," she said.

Firewalls would allow people to read court filings, but prevent them from accessing restricted parts of the court's computer server.

The Ninth federal circuit, based in San Francisco, is particularly cutting-edge when it comes to computer technology, Mullings said. The bankruptcy court's servers are maintained at the district's San Francisco offices, connected to the court's Las Vegas offices by a high-speed T1 data line.

When the Las Vegas court receives a paper filing, clerks scan the filing into the court's computer system. Because the documents are scanned, they are stored and displayed as a picture of a piece of paper. Consequently, special image-reading software is needed to read the documents. The bankruptcy court's site offers links to sites offering free image reading software.

The scanned documents differ from most documents on the World Wide Web, which are electronic copies of word processing or hyper-text markup language (html) files. Electronic copies use less memory and load more quickly into Web browsers. In addition, they require less processing time. Whereas the bankruptcy court's current paper documents must be scanned into its computer system page by page, an electronic file can simply be copied onto a server from a disk.

Mullings said the court will eventually accept electronic filings, and may eventually go paperless, or as paperless as possible -- though the court has to provide a recourse for debtors who come into the office and fill out a form right there and then to file for bankruptcy protection, she said.

In addition to posting bankruptcy filings, the court is going high-tech in another innovative way: using video-conferencing equipment to link remote judges with their courtrooms. Just last week, Judge Gregg Zive heard cases in a Las Vegas courtroom from his Reno office via the court's T1-based wide area network.

The video conferencing system uses existing networks and equipment, Mullings said.

"We've been able to institute some really good ideas, for not a lot of money," she said.

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