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TECH SUPPORT e the-version BY GERRY BLACKWE LL T — SU PR E M E C O U RT — By October the top court will make it mandatory to electronically file appeal documents. A recent pilot project is helping iron out the kinks. he august and sometimes fusty Supreme Court of Canada is putting its seal of approval on e-filing. A re- cent pilot project will make way for mandatory electronic filing of documents for appeals in October. Borden Ladner Gervais LLP was one of the guinea pigs. The firm acted as agent for the respondent's counsel in RBC Dominion Securities Inc. v. Merrill Lynch Canada Inc., a labour law case. It was one of three the SCC practised on in April. The other two were criminal. BLG is a longtime SCC agent. (The Supreme Court of Canada Act requires counsel residing outside the national capital region to file through an agent in Ottawa.) The firm was also involved in an earlier e-filing pilot project in 2002, when the Supreme Court experimented with e-filing applications for appeal. So it was a natural choice to participate in this project. "The SCC looked at the pi- lot as an opportunity to have a number of agents work with the court in order to iron out the wrinkles that inevitably arise when a new process like this is be- ing unfurled," explains BLG partner Carole Brown, lead on Merrill Lynch. We spoke with Brown after the first two cases had been heard but before hers had gone to court. There were glitches in the first two, she says, but nothing major, and nothing the court can't easily cor- rect. For Brown, e-filing is a huge win for lawyers, judges, clients, and the public. For starters, under the initial guidelines, the SCC is reducing paper production by almost half — from 23 to 13 copies of facta, records, and briefs of author- ity; and from 23 to five copies of other documents. Counsel will be required to submit a CD with indexed images of and searchable text for all documents. It's possible that as counsel and judges become more comfortable with the electronic process, the court will www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com JUNE 2008 19 ILLUSTRATION: MATT MIGNANELLI