Lead documents vs. Attachments in EFSP

KB article ID: 830 (permalink)

Some EFSP's require the filer to distinguish between a lead document and an attachment. Based on our understanding (bearing in mind that we cannot give legal advice), our understanding of which to use is found below.

Lead documents- the only thing we've ever seen which seems to indicate what is a lead document is the list of statewide standard filing codes listed in the configuration standards available from http://efile.illinoiscourts.gov/ . Generally speaking, these are documents which:

    • Needs its own file stamp.

    • Needs action by the court (e.g.summons, proposed order, etc)

    • Are required to be docketed in the record sheet (technical reference below)

    • Have a filing fee indicated directly on the Filing Code in the court's eFileIL configuration (counterclaims).

    • Any document which needs to be confidential (because at least some EFSPs don't allow the filer to mark an attachment as confidential)

Based on the above, each of the following pairs of documents would be separate lead documents in the same envelope:

    1. Answer and a Jury Demand

    2. Motion and a proposed order

    3. Complaint and a summons

    4. A financial affidavit and the Notice Of Confidential Information Within Court Filing required for securing personal financial data under SCR 138.

Attachments- what documents could possibly be treated as attachments?

    1. One referred to in another document (e.g. "see Exhibit 1 attached hereto")

    2. Something had to be broken into pieces by the filer in order to comply with court rules regarding maximum document size.

That said, Goodin recommends that courts consider telling filers to include the attachments in the same pdf as the lead document. Why? Because state policy says that e-filed documents can't be modified. So if the filer submits a filing with a lead document and two attachments, it will be three documents in Imaging... we can't combine them.

Technical references

Figure 2 in section 2.3.3 of the ECF spec - envelope message- document with id of D2 has two attachments (purple blocks A1 and A2), but only the filing code which guarantees us a meaningful record sheet entry is found in the document (see RegisterActionDescriptionText).