GST and get e-filling
In law, filing is the delivery of a document to the clerk of a court and the acceptance
of the document by the clerk for placement into the official record.[1] If a document is
delivered to the clerk and is temporarily placed or deposited with the court (but is not
accepted for filing), it is said to have been lodged with or received by the court (but
not filed).[2] Courts will not consider motions unless an appropriate memorandum or
brief is filed before the appropriate deadline. Usually a filing fee is paid which is
part of court costs.
In civil procedure systems, filing rules can be mandatory or permissive. In a mandatory
filing system, all documents of legal importance exchanged between the parties must also be
concurrently filed with the court, while in a permissive filing system, nothing needs to be
filed until the case reaches a point where direct judicial management is absolutely
necessary (such as the brink of trial).
For example, the United States federal courts operate on a mandatory filing system (with
minor exceptions for the most routine discovery exchanges).[3] In contrast, from the reign
of Edward IV during the late 1400s to the late 1990s (that is, before the 1998 promulgation
of the Civil Procedure Rules), the trial courts of England and Wales normally did not
maintain comprehensive pretrial case files (beyond recording the issuance of a writ to
initiate a legal proceeding).[4][5] Instead, after service of a writ, the parties merely
served their pleadings on each other, then at some point in time, one party would ask the
court to set down the case for trial (that is, put the case on a list of cases awaiting the
setting or "fixture" of trial dates) and lodge two copies of the pleadings with the court
(along with other documents relevant to the planned trial).[4][6] Even after they had been
lodged (i.e., temporarily deposited) with the court, the pleadings were not filed
immediately. Rather, one copy was for the personal use of the judge, while the other copy
would be officially filed after the trial together with the judgment to establish the
court's permanent record of the issues that had been formally adjudicated at trial.[
Filing methods
Filing traditionally has been performed by visiting a clerk at a filing window, paying a
filing fee by cash, cheque, or credit card, and submitting the document to be filed in
duplicate or even triplicate. For each document filed, the court clerk inspects the document
to ensure compliance with the court's rules on how legal documents should be formatted,
verifies that the filer has not been declared a vexatious litigant, and confirms that the
case number and caption are for a valid case.
Next, the court clerk then stamps both copies with a large stamp that indicates the name of
the court and the date the document was filed, then keeps one copy for the court's files and
returns one copy to the filer for the filer's own records. In certain jurisdictions, the
clerk will stamp duplicate copies returned to the filer as "file-conformed" or "conformed
copy" rather than "filed". These stamps mean the duplicate copy appears to conform to the
appearance of the original document, and in turn, a copy bearing such a stamp can be
submitted with later filings as evidence of the earlier act of filing. But the "filed" stamp
is reserved for the original document that goes into the court file, and will be seen
outside that file only if one obtains a certified copy photocopied directly from the
original document on file.
In courts that require triplicate submissions, the third copy is then taken (either by the
clerk or by the filer) to the chambers or courtroom of the judge assigned to the case. The
clerk then adds the document to the docket for the case as well as any related deadlines or
events.
If the document is the first pleading filed in a case (usually the complaint), the court
clerk also assigns a new case number and opens a new file for the case.