The Delaware Court of Chancery is widely recognized as the nation’s preeminent forum for the determination of business disputes. The Court has official jurisdiction to hear and determine all “matters and causes in equity” involving businesses with legal standing in the state of Delaware. In light of the fact that more than 50% of U.S. public corporations—including 60% of Fortune 500 companies—are incorporated in the state of Delaware, the reality is that the Court of Chancery handles litigation involving thousands of corporations and other business entities through which a vast amount of the world’s commercial affairs are conducted.
As with other courts in the U.S., the Delaware Court of Chancery experienced a significant rise in litigation in the 1980s, which continued to escalate into the 1990s. The Court of Chancery officials decided it was time to make a change in their manual system of paper filings.
"The paper filing of documents for the cases in our docket had just become overwhelming for us to manage, both in terms of the workload requirement for the court clerks and the storage requirements for the physical files,” said Chancellor William Chandler. “I met with the vice chancellors to discuss what would be involved with making a switch to electronic filing.”
The Court of Chancery selected File & Serve from LexisNexis® and designated it as the official e-filing service for certain categories of document-intense corporate litigation filed with the Court. According to Chancellor Chandler, the benefits realized from the implementation of File & Serve were vast and immediate. more
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