Bye Bye, Expanded Record Excerpts!

Just in time for the Florida Bar Annual Meeting, the Eleventh Circuit issued a new Administrative Order, General Order 39 [.pdf], significantly reducing the documents that a party must provide to the Court in paper form. As regular readers or 11th Circuit practitioners might recall, the “Expanded Record Excerpts” the Court had been requiring to go along with the electronic record was quite burdensome to clients and attorneys and generated an enormous amount of paper.

It’s kind of funny that the Court in its electronic records program requires the trial court to ensure that the electronic record be in text-searchable format, but the General Order posted on the Court’s website is not. Still, this is a big step forward for appellate practitioners in the Eleventh Circuit. This change no doubt stems from the lively conversation at February’s Eleventh Circuit Appellate Practice Institute [.pdf], so it’s great to hear that the Court was so responsive in balancing the needs of its judges with the practicalities faced by its advocates.