E-filing account maintenance: Did someone leave your firm? Here's what to do.

In the second of our e-file account maintenance series, we’ll cover what steps you will want to take when an employee leaves your firm. Hang in there, this one is a long one but important if you run into this situation. Did you miss part one of the series? If so click here to learn what needs to be done when you have a new user. 

Let's talk about Doxpop changes that will be needed first. 

First, you’ll want to remove any saved alerts so that none of them are being counted against your account limits.

• Go to the ‘my doxpop’ tab.
• Then in the blue menu to the left click on the ‘View Users’ link.
• Locate the user that has left your firm and click the ‘Details’ link.
• Remove any bar ID alerts by clicking ‘View user ID list’ and disable notifications on any saved bar IDs.
• Use your browser's back button to navigate back to the user information screen.
• Remove scheduled searches or search watches by clicking on ‘View user's searches and notifications’ link. 
• Here you can then delete or modify any of the user’s saved searches. 

With that done, you will now want to inactivate that user by using the browser’s back button to get back to the Doxpop account user list. Then, just click the ‘Inactivate’ link for that user. This will remove them from your firm's list of active Doxpop users and prevent them from accessing your firm’s account.

Note that if the person leaving is an admin, you may want to make sure you grant admin rights to another user that will be replacing their duties. If you need a user reactivated, give us call and our support team has the ability to reactivate a user if needed. 

Now, let's dive into e-file.

This can get complicated depending on the situation, so we’ll cover the basics, but if you have a more complicated situation, give us a call and we can help you through it. What you need to do first depends on the role the person served in your firm so just scroll down to the section that applies to your situation.

Paralegal, assistant or another user that files on behalf of an attorney but is not an attorney-

This is pretty simple, the e-file account administrator needs to take the following steps:

• Navigate to the ‘e-filing’ tab.
• Click the ‘E-filing Account Administration’ link.
• In the Users box click on the name of the user that has left.
• Click [Delete User] button.
• Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it].

That's it! You’ve removed that e-file user from your firm but will still be able to see filings that user made on behalf of the firm in the My Electronic Filings area.

You may want to check if this person was listed to get administrative copies of service in the service contacts. This is done by just clicking on a service contact name, then just remove their email from the Administrative Copy field. Make sure to replace it with someone else if needed.

Okay, that's the easy situation, now let's go over steps if an attorney is leaving your firm. There can be quite a few scenarios here, but we’ll cover the easy ones.

An attorney is leaving and taking all of their cases with them.

Service Contacts- You will want to remove the service contact from your firm from their cases:

• On the ‘E-filing Account Administration’ page click the [Additional Tools] button in Service Contacts
• Use the second tool to detach your firm’s service contact from all the cases it is attached to.
• Choose the firm service contact from the drop down. (The “firm” service contact, is the one without the globe symbol).
• Click [Detach]
• This will run a process detaching that service contact from all of the cases it's attached to. 
• We suggest re-running this process on the public service contact also (the one with the globe)*. 
• With each of these, you will get an email that lists what actions were taken on what cases. 
• Click on the [< Account Administration] button above the service contact tools
• Click on the attorney’s name in the Service Contacts box 
• Click [Delete]
• Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it]

*While the public service contact will update with their new information when they update the roll of attorneys, it can only be detached by the firm that attached it to a case originally. This way the parting attorney can then decided once at their new firm which service contact they wish to use and attach it appropriately to all their cases.

Now, remove the attorney from the firm’s e-file account. Again, on the E-filing Account Administration page follow these steps:

• In the Attorney's box, click on the attorney’s name
• Click [Delete]
• Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it]

Next, if they have an e-file user, you'll want to go and remove that user from the e-file account following the steps in above in the paralegal/assistant section to remove the e-file user for them. 

You are done! You may want to coordinate this process with the attorney once they are set-up at their new firm. If you detach your firm’s service contact on all the cases before the attorney (or their new firm admin) has the ability to get a new service contact attached to their cases it’s quite possible for them to miss electronic service on an active case. 

An attorney is leaving but ALL of their cases stay with the firm. 

Before making changes on the e-file account you will want to ensure that you have taken care of the legal process to replace the attorney of record on the case. This entails filing an appearance for the attorney that is taking over the case and adding them as an attorney of record during that filing as well as filing the withdrawal for the departing attorney. Once you've completed that on all the cases you can take the following administrative steps in e-file.

Service Contacts- You will want to replace the service contact for that attorney with that of one that is not leaving your firm.

• On the ‘E-filing Account Administration’ page click the [Additional Tools] button in Service Contacts
• Use the third tool to replace that attorney’s firm’s service contact on all the cases it is attached to with someone else at your firm. 
• Choose the firm service contact to be replaced from the drop down. (The “firm” service contact, is the one without the globe symbol).
• Choose the firm preferred service contact you want that one to be replaced with
• Click [Replace]
• This will run a process that detaches the outgoing attorney’s service contact on any cases its attached to and then attaches the specified replacement service contact. 
• We suggest re-running this process on the outgoing attorney’s public service contact also as this will catch any cases that the public service contact was attached to. 
• With each of these, you will get an email that lists what actions were taken on what cases. 
• Click on the [< Account Administration] button above the service contact tools
• Click on the attorney’s name in the Service Contacts box 
• Click [Delete]
• Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it]

Now, remove the attorney from the firm’s e-file account. Again, on the E-filing Account Administration page follow these steps:

• In the Attorney's box, click on the attorney’s name
• Click [Delete]
• Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it]

Next, if they have an e-file user, you'll want to go and remove that user from the e-file account following the steps in above in the paralegal/assistant section to remove the e-file user for them. 

And that's it, you’ve replaced and then removed that attorney from the firm’s e-file account. Don’t forget that this will only modify the attorney as it related to the e-file system itself and not the official case record. Your firm will need to act appropriately with each case through the court system to replace the attorney of record on any affected cases.

An attorney is leaving but some cases stay and some cases go with them. 

This gets a bit more complicated and is where we’d advise you to just give us a call.

Essentially, depending on the volume of cases that are staying or leaving, you are going to follow one of the two instructions above for service contacts and then manually correct any cases changed that didn’t need to be. Also, depending on the volume of cases you may find it will be easier to just manually update the service contacts on affected cases one by one. We can help you decide the more efficient route. Once you have worked out service contacts you will still end up removing the attorney from the firm’s listed attorneys.

If you run into any issues during this process always feel free to pick up the phone and give our support team a call at 866-396-7671. A real human will answer the phone and help walk you through the process!

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