I give this a vote for progress. One can now file an appeal with the Court in PDF format and use a credit card for payment.
I have learned the pitfalls of filing by mail. One needs to allow for two weeks to file a notice of appeal and memorandum in support by mail. I had one which I mailed on Friday and which had to be filed by the next Monday, 10 days away. It arrived at the Clerk’s office on the 11th day. Tough luck. I wrote the Clerk complaining. I received a call from her expressing sympathy and we discussed where the delay took place with no resolution. E filing will hopefully take care of that.
I would suggest another improvement.
The Clerk should be directed to accept all filings whether compliant or not. Currently if a Memorandum in Support of Jurisdiction is a half page too long, it will be rejected. This is not a problem, unless there is no time to correct it within the appeal period. The Memorandum is jurisdictional. That is the Clerk will not file it; and if it cannot be filed within the time limit for the appeal, the appeal is not timely i.e. you lose. I think that the Clerk should provisionally reject it and a short grace period be allowed to correct the error. If not corrected, then the rejection would be final. The default should be that the filing should be accepted unless it is clearly out of rule. The Court might complain of the extra work – then hire more law clerks to screen the pleadings.