Filing & Service

Civil L.R. 5-1 governs electronic case filing in N.D. Cal. All cases are designated for the CM/ECF system unless exempted by court order.

Mandatory ECF (Civil L.R. 5-1(b))

"All cases, except where exempted by court order, are designated for participation in the Court's Electronic Case Filing ('ECF') system." Pro se parties must file case-initiating documents manually. After manually filing case-initiating documents, pro se parties may file subsequent documents manually or register for ECF.

Attorney Registration Obligation (Civil L.R. 5-1(c)(1))

"Each attorney of record is obligated to become an ECF user and obtain a user ID and password for access to the system upon filing a case in this district or before e-filing a document in an existing case in this district."

Filing Deadline (Civil L.R. 5-1(d)(4))

"All electronic filings of documents must be completed as described in Civil L.R. 5-1(d)(3) prior to midnight in order to be considered timely filed that day."

Service via ECF (Civil L.R. 5-1(h)(1))

"Upon the filing of a document by a party, the ECF system will send to the registered attorneys for all parties in the case a Notice of Electronic Filing, which constitutes service on the receiving party. Exceptions to this are electronically filed civil complaints and other case-initiating documents, which must be served manually."

No Chambers Copies (Civil L.R. 5-1(d)(7))

"No chambers copy or 'courtesy copy' of an electronically-filed document shall be submitted to the Court, unless required by a standing order of the assigned Judge or requested by the assigned Judge in a particular case." Always check the judge's standing order before submitting paper copies.

Certificate of Service (Civil L.R. 5-5)

For documents not served via ECF, a certificate of service stating the date, place, and manner of service, and the name and address of each person served must be attached. Failure to provide a certificate is not grounds to refuse filing, but the judge may disregard the document if the adverse party timely objects for lack of service.

Technical Failure (Civil L.R. 5-1(d)(5))

"The Clerk shall deem the ECF system to be subject to a technical failure on a given day if the system is unable to accept filings continuously or intermittently over the course of any period of time greater than one hour after 12:00 noon that day. Filings due on the day of a technical failure which were not filed solely due to such technical failure shall be due the next court day."