I recently attended a continuing legal education seminar at which Justice Martin Richter spoke about e-filing in the Dallas Court of Appeals.  Here are the highlights of his presentation:

1. The Dallas Court of Appeals began accepting e-filing this year.  E-filing has been well-received by the court and will likely become mandatory sometime next year.

2. Don’t merely prepare an appellate brief as you’ve always done and then convert it to PDF for e-filing.  Instead, prepare the brief so that it can be easily read and navigated on an iPad. . . as all of the court’s justices now have iPads.

3. Hyperlinks and bookmarks are extremely helpful in navigating a brief. 

4. All e-filings in the court must be submitted via one of the six approved providers.  Amazingly, one of the six providers removes hyperlinks and bookmarks from briefs before forwarding the briefs to the court.  [Justice Richter did not identify this provider, but it seems that he was referring to ProDoc, which happens to be the largest provider in terms of users and filings.]