The basic concept of efiling is that the filers (attorneys, Form 50 Agents, self represented parties, and others) create documents and submit them to the court. Each time a filer sends a submission to the court the submission is time-stamped when it is received in the Clerk Review queue. The submissions are then reviewed by the clerks at the court to determine if the documents and information are acceptable and if payment for court fees can be made. If the clerk finds that the information and documents in the submission are acceptable the clerk will electronically docket the information into the court's case management system and store the electronic documents in a document repository. Before the clerk actually reviews the submission, the efiling system does some checking as well. For example, if one of the documents that the filer included in the submission has a virus, the system rejects the submission and tells the filer that their submission was rejected because of a virus. So if you are under a deadline to get your documents to the court and you don't have current anti-virus software installed on your system you could be transmitting documents with viruses and the system will detect and reject your submission. Once your submission has been processed by the clerk a receipt is returned to the filer. If the submission was to initiate a case, then the receipt will include a new case number.

Each time someone efiles something to a case, notifications are distributed to other registered participants on the case.  This notification allows the other parties on the case to view what was submitted.  There are some exceptions to notifications. The efiling system also broadcasts notifications when the court posts court-generated documents to the participants on a case. 

The Filers Interface is where the filer logs in to efile and review case summaries and notifications. 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 everything is packaged into a submission using the LegalXML format. The filer is then asked to review the information. When the filer determines that everything is correct they submit the information. The package is then transmitted 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:

• Initiate a case - by adding the information normally captured in a coversheet with the documents.
• Send follow-up documents - answers, motions, briefs, amended complaints and so forth with the data that are associated with those types of documents.
• Receive notifications - when a submission is sent to the court that you have been involved with you will receive a Notification of Electronic filing in your account.
• Check case history - anyone with an account can look up a case history if they have the case number and a participant's last name. If you are not registered as a participant on the case then you can look at the history but not download the documents. If you are registered as a participant on the case you can download the documents at no cost.
• Check the status of your submissions - each submission has a status that changes status until the clerk completes their process and either accepts or rejects the submission. If your submission is a proposed order then the state of filed does not mean the order is accepted. The judge still must take action. Filed only means the court has received and recorded your information.
• Resubmit - when a submission is rejected the clerk will usually include some note to identify why the submission was rejected. In the check status view on rejected submissions the system will let you resend the submission by taking all the data in your previous submission and the documents and prepare a new submission and leave it in a state where you can make changes and then send the information again.