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Cook County eFiling Tips

COOK COUNTY E-FILING TIP SHEET

 

  • Cook County “help” line:  312-603-HELP (4357)
  • Clerk will need your e-filing Envelope number to answer questions

 Most common rejection reasons:

  • Wrong case number
  • Did not provide Cook County Attorney Code
  • Document improperly scanned, blank, or illegible

Document Formatting:

  • Don't forget you need to have 2 inches from the top of the first page only.
  • PDF’s must be OCR’d (text searchable)

 Case Numbers:

  • Case numbers are case sensitive, you must put the four digit year, and you must have the correct number of digits.
  • Chancery cases = 5 digits (2018CH12345)
  • Law Division cases = 6 digits (2018L123456)

 

Attorney Code:

You MUST add your firm ID number in the “Case Cross Reference Number” section for EVERY filing or your filing will be rejected.


FILINGS section:

  •  In the Odyssey platform note that the filer is the ONLY person who will receive rejection notices.
  •  If you add email addresses for your staff/case team in the Courtesy Copies box, they will ONLY receive the “accepted” notices.
  • The “rejected” notifications ONLY go to the person who logged in and did the e-filing. There is no option to add a contact to receive rejected notifications (in Odyssey).
  •  Tyler Technologies advised that most law firms are creating email rules so that any email that comes in from efilingmail@tylerhost.net and/or no-reply@tylerhost.net get auto forwarded to someone that YOU designate. Or you can login to your account to view your firm's filing history.  

Service:

  • In the Odyssey platform, in the Filings section > Filing Type
  • As of 6/29/2018 in the Odyssey platform, if you select Filing Type as “EFileandServe” the only attorneys that will be served are YOUR firm attorneys.
  •  You select EFileandServe and upload your documents to be filed.  The next section that pops up is the Service Contacts section.
  •  You receive a message “Please select at least one service contact for service” and “Only contacts checked below will be served electronically.
  •  Click on your Plaintiff or Defendant (whichever party YOU represent).
  •  If your attorney is not listed, add them as a Service Contact.
  • Add From Public List (As of 6/29/2018, Tyler Technologies has confirmed that the Public List feature is TURNED OFF and has NOT been made available by the State of Illinois.  It does NOT work at this point in time.)
  • Right now, you can only select the party YOUR attorney represents and add YOUR attorney(s) to the Service Contacts list.
  •  When your filing gets accepted, the efileIL manager system will send out the acceptance notice to YOUR attorneys that you designated in the Service Contacts section.
  •  You can only add YOUR attorneys – you cannot add any opposing counsel.  They are supposed to add themselves when they e-file.

 If you did not see opposing counsel listed in the Service Contacts section, they will NOT receive any notice that you filed something.  YOU must serve them.  The eFileIL manager system will NOT send them notice of the filing.

  •  The hearing date option will show once the filing is SUBMITTED, only if that function was configured for that case type and that court. The return date will only be available on case types that are configured to have a return date, otherwise it will show under Not Applicable
  •  Each court has specific requirements for filing codes based on the location; case category and case type you are filing into. Here in technical support, we are not able to help with the Filing Codes, case type and category. If you are unsure of which selection to make you will need to contact the court that you're filing into for further instructions.

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