San Francisco Superior Court will put a contract for mandatory e-filing of litigation cases out to bid. The court intended to award the job to LexisNexis, which performed well in its pilot program, but decided to evaluate other bids in response to public comments.

As reported in The Recorder and Cal Law, court research vendors, including One Legal LLC, objected not being considered for the contract. Archer Norris partner Jeff Hamerling, who represented One Legal, expressed concerns that selecting one company to provide e-filing services would give the company too much power. Jeff wrote:

“Both the failure to provide competitive bidding procedures and the pre-selection of Lexis-Nexis violate the long-standing public policy of competitive bidding for government contracts.”

The article was originally published in The Recorder and subscription-based Cal Law website at http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/index.jsp