Philadelphia City Hall. (Photo: Shutterstock.com/Diego M. Radzinschi)

It has been more than a week since a computer “virus intrusion” led the First Judicial District to shut down its website and electronic filing system, and law firms are having to return to the “ old-school way” of couriers and paper filings to adapt.

“It's basically taken us back to the 'old school' days before [electronic case files], when everything was submitted by hand,” Saul Ewing attorney Matthew Smith said.

Philadelphia's court system website has been shut down since the afternoon of May 21. According to a city spokesman, the move was done to “safeguard” the systems after the First Judicial District experienced a “virus intrusion on a limited number of computers.” The shutdown left the FJD's website, online civil docket search and the e-filing system for civil and criminal cases inaccessible.

A statement released by the court late Friday said the “precautionary measure” was taken after malware was discovered on a limited number of FJD workstations. The statement further said no definitive timeline could be given for when the system will be back online, but the FJD is contracting the services of a cybersecurity firm and has created secure network connections so employees can begin docketing filings in an effort to mitigate the potential backlog.

“We are currently unable to provide more information concerning this virus so as not to provide any detail-specific information that could jeopardize the remediation process we are engaged in,” the statement said.

In the meantime, law firms—often tasked with ensuring their digital services are on the bleeding edge—are adjusting in the opposite direction.

Mitchell Kaplan, managing shareholder of Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy, said his firm is relying on couriers to file everything in person and in paper at the courthouse. Although it's been years since attorneys have had to file motions that way and many of the younger attorneys have no experience at all with the practice, Kaplan said the staff has experience with non-electronic filings, and, given the Center City firm's proximity to the courthouse, in-person filing has not been overly taxing.

“We're just going 'old school,'” Kaplan said.

Not all firms are as lucky.

Burns White's offices are in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, in suburban Philadelphia, 15 miles—and at least a 30-minute drive—from City Hall. According to the firm's east region office manager Lisa Blair, a courier comes once a day to pick up the filings and drop them off at the court, where they are filed and time-stamped. To ensure the filings make it to the courier and down 14 miles on the congenitally congested Schuylkill Expressway on time, lawyers have been given a 1 p.m. deadline to get their papers submitted.

An added complication is that some attorneys from Pittsburgh also handle matters in Philadelphia, which means those filings need to be emailed to the Philadelphia office, so they can be printed out and hand-delivered. But, Blair said, the system has been working seamlessly.

“The convenience of e-filing is sorely missed, but we're making do,” Blair said.

Making sure motions are filed on time has been the main concern, and lines at the courthouse have been a worry, lawyers said. According to those who spoke with The Legal, lines were up to an hour long on Tuesday, but, they said, the court has generally done a good job of keeping things running smoothly.

“The court is doing a pretty good job managing this situation, given how utterly dependent we've all become on the court's website and filing system,” said Albert Bixler, member-in-charge for Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott's Philadelphia office. “We've been doing things the old-fashioned way, filing in paper form, with checks attached.”

Bixler, however, said problems have arisen in filing certain motions—like motions for non pros in medical malpractice cases—where the parties would need to be able to access the full docket to ensure that key filings—like a certificate of merit—were included. Time-sensitive filings, or filings intended to trigger other deadlines, have also raised some frustrations, but he said those have been a small subset of cases. For the most part, he said, the courts and the firm has adapted.

“For our people, it didn't require learning anything new. It just required remembering how to do it the old way,” he said.

The court has said attorneys can cite the technical issues if filing deadlines are missed, and the procedural rules allow for some leeway if there is a breakdown in the court system, but John Hare of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman Goggin said that the longer the computers are down, the more necessary it will be for attorneys to adapt.

Although he doubted the technology issues would cause any significant waiver arguments for the appellate courts, after a week of having the filing system down, attorneys should be on notice.

“Last week was a different story in terms of navigating it, but now, this week, I think we have to be careful to make sure we're taking alternative measures to file,” he said.

That's why, he said, his firm has also put administrative procedures in place to ensure everything gets filed on time and in person.

For the most part, attorneys said clients have not begun to raise concerns about having sealed documents, or private information being exposed. And a person familiar with the Philadelphia court system said litigants' data had not been exposed as a result of the intrusion.

But Theodore Schaer of Zarwin Baum, who focuses on data security litigation, said the incident should raise awareness about the vulnerabilities everyone faces today, and that small firms and solo practitioners need to be just as vigilant about data security as the Fortune 500 companies.

“The breach of the FJD has certainly raised concerns with people because it hits them right where they work,” he said. “Nobody in litigation in Philadelphia has not been adversely affected.”