MerusCase's  extensive library of court forms includes all of the DWC forms available at  dir.ca.gov. You can use MerusCase to automatically fill these forms out for either

A: Printing and "snail-mail" filing.  

or

B:  Electronic filing through JET-file.

JET-file is an electronic filing program  developed by the DWC. With JET-file, commonly-filed forms like the Application for Adjudication of Claim and the Declaration of Readiness to Proceed can be submitted through JET third-party filers (including MerusCase) in the form of digital "packets" containing the forms themselves and associated documents like Proofs of Service and Venue Verifications. Processing and turnaround for JET-filed packets is usually  very quick: we've seen ADJs get submitted to EAMS in the morning and come back with a case number in the afternoon.

Selecting forms for a new Application for Adjudication of Claim packet

This kind of speed is possible because most of the information in these packets is stored in digital plain-text, meaning most of the information (names, address, dates of injury) can be automatically read and processed by JET's servers. These packets even use a typed name and date as a legally-binding signature, forgoing the need for an ink-and-paper "wet" signature. Scanned PDFs can be used with tags applied to speed up sorting by EAMS, but the vast majority of information in packets has to be typed in to the forms included in the packet.

We recently received an email from a firm about some Application for Adjudication packets that had all been rejected shortly after they'd been submitted. The user at this firm was new to JET-filing and had previously filed a few Declaration of Readiness to Proceed packets, and they were confused as to why all of their ADJ packets were seemingly rejected at the same time. "I followed the instructions and included the DWC1 form," the user at this firm said, "but it's telling me there's an error because this form was included. Help!"

Submitting JET-file packets for a case through MerusCase involves creating a new packet in MerusCase's DWC E-file Packets interface, then dragging forms and documents into the packet from that case's Activities. When you're creating a packet, you can make new copies of the primary forms in the packet, or you can select forms that you've previously filled out in that case. Once you submit the packet, it's sent from MerusCase via secure file transfer protocol and picked up by JET. Any success or failure messages are created by JET and handed back to us, and failure messages generated by JET can be viewed in the packet so you can correct them and resubmit.

I opened up this firm's support account and went to their DWC E-file Packets section to see the packets they'd filed recently. As the user reported, I noticed a block of ADJs that were all submitted that morning and rejected shortly thereafter. I opened up one of these rejected packets and clicked the Show Details link at the top to view any JET errors in the court transmission log, and I noticed the packet had failed at the second of the three validation stages.

Errors from JET are auto-generated by their electronic filing system, so they're generally quite technical and can be a little tough to decipher. This error, "Level Two Validation failed due to errors. 20150 Non-mandatory Attachment included with form.: DWC-1 CLAIM FORM," was simple enough: there was a document in the packet called DWC-1 CLAIM FORM that JET wasn't expecting and couldn't decipher. I looked at this packet's list of included documents, and sure enough, there was a scanned DWC-1 Claim Form in addition to the digitally-created DWC-1A Application for Adjudication of Claim form.

Electronic packet filing can save a huge amount of time, but the technical requirements to achieve this require careful attention to the data included in these packets. JET's aggressive validation ensures rapid processing by blocking non-standard information that might otherwise "gum up the works," and part of our job at MerusCase Support is to communicate these requirements to the user so they can quickly, confidently, and successfully file their cases.

                                    Written by Paul Bertucci, Migration Coordinator and Technical Support Engineer at MerusCase

One of the ways law firms add a personal touch to their client interactions is through their letters. Court forms and other filings have to follow rigid formatting guidelines, but letters with a sophisticated letterhead and a clean layout make a strong first impression. These customized letters can take a lot of judicious editing and copy-pasting to manually craft in a word processing application like Microsoft Word, but MerusCase's merge capabilities lets firms take a base design, or template, and quickly fill the letter out with case-specific details.

A MerusCase merge field, before the template is merged.

Merging a template in MerusCase starts with a Word document with formatting and content specific to that letter, like overall layout, fonts, and general wording. Case-specific information is then added to these templates through the use of pieces of code called merge fields: put <> and <> into the body of the template, and "The applicant, <>, was injured on <>" automatically becomes "The applicant, John Sample, was injured on 01-01-2013."

MerusCase comes with about a hundred commonly-used, generic templates (like "Letter to Claims Adjuster" or "Proof of Service"), allowing even brand new firms to start merging templates out-of-the-box. Firms may also  customize their templates: if they provide us with their own commonly-used office letters, we can convert them from legacy formats, add in the appropriate merge fields, and make them available for use in all cases in Merus.

Templates may even be customized to automatically show  different letterheads for different locations within the same firm. A firm with multiple offices can have a unique letterhead and address for each office, allowing the same set of templates to be used across the whole firm without maintaining separate "Opening Letter - Office A" and "Opening Letter - Office B" templates. Switch the associated office in a case's details in Merus, and the letterhead and any <> merge fields in templates will also switch for that case.

Once users have merged a template and made any desired edits, they can use the  Save To Merus feature in Merus-merged documents to save directly back to the case. Pushing the Save To Merus button opens a secure FTP connection to MerusCase's servers and uploads the document to the original case's activity list. This one-click QuickSave is available for ANY Word document downloaded from MerusCase, including previously-uploaded documents in the case's activity list.

21st-century document handling is just one of many features MerusCase offers to save users time and effort, but it's one of MerusCase's most popular features: many firms merge dozens of templates a day, and updating via QuickSave to a centralized location online ensures all users at the firm have access to the most up-to-date versions of case documents.

                                Written by Paul Bertucci, Migration Coordinator and Technical Support Engineer at MerusCase