These instructions are to Initiate a New Case in the Los Angeles Civil Courts—meaning this case is brand new, and does not exist yet in any court.
Category: Electronic Filing
File on an Existing Case in Los Angeles Civil Court
These instructions are to File on an Existing Case in the Los Angeles Civil Courts—meaning this case already exists in the court system.
Pro Se and Self Litigant E-Filing Guide
Electronic filing can be an overwhelming experience. To help assist you with your filing, here are some of our frequently asked questions new filers ask to help you file quicker and easier. This information covers the states of California, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Texas.
Update your Email Settings to Configure the Notifications you Receive
The email you receive is dependent on your User Preference settings. If you aren’t receiving notifications or are receiving too many, this is the place to customize your preferences, so you will want to make sure they are properly set up.
Compress / Reduce a PDF When Documents Exceed The File Size Limit
The courts impose a 25mb file size for PDF documents, and a 35MB limit for the entire filing. If you need to e-file a document, but the file size of your document exceeds the 25 MB file size limit enforced by the Courts, then you may need to do some work to reduce, compress, or optimize your file size. Otherwise, you may need to split your document into parts for filing.
Add a Case to Your Account
In order to file a document on an existing case, you must first Add a Case to your account. You have the option of searching by court and case number, or an Advanced Case Search by court and party name.
Create Serve Only
If you wish to have a document served electronically to any service contacts on a case, Serve Only is an option to use. When you click the Submit button, the document(s) data is sent to the court only. The court then sends Notification of Service emails directly to each of the service recipients, and it notifies us of this service to any of our customers.
File into a Non-Indexed Case
From time to time, an existing case will not come up in the E-Filing system. If the court offers it, you will have the option to File into a Non-Indexed Case. Once the court accepts the Non-Indexed Case filing, you will be able to file on that case by clicking File on an Existing from the dashboard!
File on an Existing Case
These steps take you through the process of e-filing on an existing case that we have to retrieve from the Court’s system. Once the filing is sent to the court’s filing clerk for review, we’ll take a quick peek at our Filing Status screen.
Initiate a New Case
These steps take you through the process of starting a brand new case, and shows you how to electronically serve your documents on parties and / or attorneys in the case through the use of service contacts. Once your new case filing is submitted, you will receive email notifications from the court on the status of your filing.