Court technology vendor requirements
Depending on the requirements imposed by the court's technology vendor, your document may be "failed" by the vendor's system before it reaches the actual court. Below are some guidelines for troubleshooting this occurrence and for preventing future failed filings.
If your document has been failed by the court’s technology vendor, use your PDF software to review your document for the possible following reasons:
Security applied to the document
If you have used Adobe Acrobat or a similar system to create your PDF, you may have inadvertently applied security to your file that will prevent it from being accessed by the court. To remove the security, open the PDF document:
Right-click on the document > Document Properties > Security and select “No Security” from the drop-down.
Combined documents
If you have used an editing tool to combine multiple different formats into a single PDF, your document may be only partially text searchable.
Apply optical character recognition (OCR) to your entire PDF before trying to file again.
Unsupported fonts
Filings must not contain unsupported fonts or symbols that may be embedded in the document.
Right-click on the document > Document Properties > Fonts tab to see a list of included fonts. Prohibited fonts include Zapf Dingbats, Wingdings, and other fonts with embedded symbols.
Incorrect paper size
All filed documents must be created on the accepted size of 8.5" X 11". Make sure that none of your pages have appeared in landscape, and check the page size by viewing the document’s properties.
Right-click on the document and select Document Properties > Page Size to confirm your document meets these criteria.
Document with editable fields
Your document still contains editable fields. For example, downloadable court forms, such as the Civil Case Information Sheet or Process Request, often contain editable fields.
Open your document in your PDF editing software and Save to PDF to finalize the editable fields before eFiling.
An important note about PDF software
Free or ‘reader’ versions of most PDF software are insufficient for court document preparation. Ensure your law firm has invested in a fully licensed professional PDF software package, such as Adobe Acrobat Pro.
This list of common errors that can lead to your document’s rejection is not inclusive. Correctly preparing your PDF for eFiling is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure eFiling success.
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