We learned from several dozen federal clerks of court and members of their staffs that pro se litigants are sometimes able to file electronically using the federal courts’ Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system, but many courts are hesitant to allow pro se filing in CM/ECF. Prisoners do not have access to the Internet, so it is not feasible for them to use CM/ECF.

We conducted this research at the request of the federal rules committees’ working group on pro se electronic filing. The most salient rules-related lessons of this research are (1) perhaps paper filers should not be required to serve their filings on parties already receiving electronic service; and (2) because electronic filing is sometimes understood to mean filing using CM/ECF and sometimes understood to mean submitting filings electronically, such as by email, perhaps the rules should clarify their references to electronic filing.

This report presents the findings from focus groups conducted with judiciary and nonjudiciary stakeholders on the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts' Wiretap Report.

This report outlines the common themes that emerged in challenges and solutions identified in focus groups with district court judges and clerks of court, bankruptcy court judges and clerks of court, and magistrate judges from November 2020 to February 2021.

This report provides an overview of the availability of information about court operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically court information on the federal courts’ public websites and how the information is presented to and accessed by website visitors. This overview also describes the differing approaches federal courts have taken for disseminating COVID-19 information on their websites and concludes with suggestions on how courts might enhance the accessibility of that information.