The Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas will install upgrades to its Electronic Case Filing and PACER system over Veterans' Day weekend. From 7:00PM on Thursday, November 10, until 7:00PM on Sunday, November 13, the system will be unavailable for electronic filing, but will be available for viewing of dockets and documents through PACER. If you have an emergency and must file a document while the system is unavailable, please call 832-215-8626. The District Court ECF and PACER systems will not be affected by this upgrade.

When you first log into the Electronic Filing System after the upgrade, you will be prompted to improve the security of your password. A link to the Change Your Password utility will be provided. The system will require passwords to be a minimum of eight (8) characters, including some upper-case (capital) letters, some lower-case letters and at least one number or punctuation mark. If your current password already meets these requirements, the system will still prompt you the first time you log in after the upgrade, but you may simply enter your current, secure password in the Change Your Password utility screens and continue to use that password thereafter.

These upgrades incorporate functions that will allow us to support the changes to the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure effective December 1, 2011. In particular, new rule 3002.1 requires a new method of filing documents supplementary to a mortgage claim. After we have installed the upgrade, we will set up the system, and send you additional information about the new rules. Information about new federal rules can be found at http://www.uscourts.gov/RulesAndPolicies/FederalRulemaking/PendingRules....

If you use a commercial software package to assist you in electronically filing documents with the Bankruptcy Court, such as those sold by Best Case or Legal Pro Systems, please check with them for upgrades to ensure continued compatibility with our ECF system. Currently, we are on release 3.3. After the upgrade, our ECF system will be release 4.2. Please note that users of newer versions of web browsers may experience problems with ECF. The system has been tested and verified for use with Firefox 3.5 and 4, and Internet Explorer 7 and 8.

If you have questions, please contact our Help Desk at 713-250-5500.