Vol. 11, No. 2 March 2015
Filing under seal
Requests and orders to file a document under seal are few and far
between, compared to the millions of filings the Clerk receives each year. Some
basics to keep in mind if the need arises in your practice:
Bring your original petition and the relevant documents on paper directly
to your assigned judicial officer for review and determination. This prevents
the information from inadvertently being scanned-in to the public record during
review. Division staff will work with the courtroom clerk to get the originals
filed.
Any documents ordered to be filed under seal must be filed on paper.
Putting these documents in an envelope and attaching a copy of the order to
seal to the outside of the envelope alerts Clerk staff of the special handling
required.
Filers are responsible for their filings. Clerk staff file documents as
they are received. Sensitive or restricted information contained within documents
will be accessible by the public if the filing party overlooks a filing
requirement. Clerk staff do not alter, modify or redact the content of records
without a court order.
For more detailed information on sealed documents and sensitive
information contained within records, see the Clerk’s Corner article in the
April 2015 edition of the Maricopa Lawyer. Past Clerk’s Corner articles are
posted on the Clerk’s website at http://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/clerks_corner.asp.
Be the first to know about
Clerk news
In addition to The Brief, the Clerk’s office has a Twitter feed for
convenient access to Clerk news. If you have a Twitter account, follow the
Clerk’s office at @MaricopaClerk, where news and information are posted about
office closures, upcoming changes and more. For information about Twitter or
creating an account, visit www.Twitter.com.
Fonts, Filings and Fixes
When converting your word
processer documents into PDF format for filing, remember to check the final PDF
for accuracy. During the conversion process, some software products create
symbols in place of words or were originally typed in a font that is not
supported in the PDF product. By opening the converted PDF before filing you
should see any error messages or variant fonts that need to be corrected.
Converted PDFs with symbols instead of words could be rejected or filed-in to
the official case record. Periodically checking converted PDFs or checking the
final PDF after you’ve used a new version of software will limit the chance of
these problems.
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