Given the current and expected status of the Court's budgets, I am curious how the other Court's have streamlined their use of postage (i.e. shifting the reposnsibility for service to the movants) Let me know what you have done in this area.

-- Eva Roeber (Eva_Roeber@wiwd.uscourts.gov), September 28, 1999

Answers

Although it had nothing to do with the budget, some of our judges are using pc fax software and cc:Mail to send copies of orders.

-- James A. Drach (James Drach@pawd.uscourts.gov), September 28, 1999.

Over the past two years, we have installed a document imaging system in our court. All court documents are imaged and are available on the internet. We also have the capability to serve counsel copies of court documents by fax. We just recently got the bugs worked out of the system and I hope to implement a pilot project in the next few weeks. I hope to start selling this to counsel around the first of the year. If postage gets real tight, it may become the mandatory way for counsel to receive notice.

-- Joe Haas (Joe_Haas@sdd.uscourts.gov), September 28, 1999.

In addition to the question I already asked, has anyone used hard copy noticing via the BNC? We are currently using hard copy noticing and we are seeing a substantial decline in our use of postage.

-- Eva Roeber (Eva_Roeber@wiwd.uscourts.gov), October 04, 1999.

We have not seen a decline in postage implementing a fax noticing Imaging System in the district. In addition, we have shifted all our parcel shipments to UPS and still have not seen a decline in our postage. I am not certain what to attribute the stationary level of the postage budget over the past several years, except that jury panels are increasing in size, therefore, juror noticing increases, i.e. postage increases to the point where we would have been saving money if everything remained at the same level of 3-4 years ago. We have not been given any direction to research the shifting of responsibility for service to the movants. I don't see this as practical. I do not foresee any alternatives, except that where a document(s) can be faxed or e-mailed rather than using "snail mail" we should take advantage of this. ("snail mail" refers to utilizing USPS)

-- Phil Reyes (phillip_reyes@txwd.uscourts.gov), October 05, 1999.

At the Bankrutpcy Court, District of New Hampshire it has been standard practice for the debtor's attorney in chapter 11 cases to be responsible for serving the majority of the orders issued. Each docket specialist has an "Attorney ___ to Serve All Parties" stamp that is placed on orders in chapter 11 cases. Through our local rules the attorneys are also responsible for serving notice of all hearings. And beyond that, we have created forms to go through the BNC on virtually any notice that must be sent to all creditors. We do not use hard copy noticing, instead we use genforms through our BANCAP system. Using the BNC has helped us realize substantial savings in postage money and time spent in noticing.

-- Kerri Mikolaities (kerri_mikolaities@nhb.uscourts.gov), October 05, 1999.

When I was the Clerk in Maryland, we found that a lot of our mailings were to big firms in Baltimore. Our first postage reduction effort was to have "mailboxes" in our mailroom for each firm. During the day, documents for each firm were deposited into the appropriate box. At the end of the day, they were consolidated into one envelope and mailed. Later, we found that we could convince the firms' runners to pick up their mail on their runs. By picking up their mail, the firms got their copies a few days earlier than before. This proved very popular with the firms and saved us a fair amount of postage money.

-- Joe Haas (Joe_Haas@sdd.uscourts.gov), October 06, 1999.

In this court, we require the parties to provide stamped, addressed envelopes. We have also adopted fax notification, and we presently have 7,463 attorneys who have consented to recieve court orders and notices by facsimile (FaxBack). All 3 of the judges in our West Palm Beach office, rely solely on our FaxBack program. Four judges in the Miami office use this program for the non-scheduling type of orders and notices. We are not able to compute the savings in postage because the postage savings is being passed on to the attorneys who previously had to provide stamped envelopes. Their is a huge savings in the amount of time and paper used in copying and conforming for chambers staff.

-- Richard Oda (Richard_Oda@ca11.uscourts.gov), October 07, 1999.

We utilize BNC for noticing in our court. In addition, we have created GENFORMS which are included in our BANCAP events and they too are noticed through BNC. We have also implemented sending court orders to attorneys via computer facsimile. The case manager scans the order via a Hewlett-Packard ScanJet II scanner. The imaged order appears in Visioneer Paperport's desktop on the PC work station. The image is dragged and dropped onto a fax machine icon. A phone/address book window appears, listing attorneys' and trustees' names and fax machine numbers. The recipients are selected, and the imaged document is faxed to them as quickly as the Cheyenne Fax Serve file server can process the request and establish a dialup connection via modem. Previously orders were copied by case managers on a copier machine, stuffed into envelopes and mailed. This has save the case managers a great deal of time and expense to the court.

-- Peggy Craig (peggy_craig@txwb.uscourts.gov), October 07, 1999.