The Texas Supreme Court Rules Advisory Committee is meeting Friday and Saturday to discuss proposed rules including adding e-filing to the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure. The proposed rules would include an electronic version of the appellate record.

Other tidbits:

• Proposed TRAP 11 would permit amicus briefs to actually “be filed” rather than merely be received by the clerk, bringing the terminology back in line with actual practice.

• When paper copies are filed in the Texas Supreme Court or courts of appeals, only an original and one copy would be required. The draft notes that this proposed rule assumes the courts will have the ability to quickly scan any paper materials to circulate internally.

  If that comes to pass, I hope the courts use these scanned copies to make briefs more readily available online, rather than the current system that depends on the cooperation of the parties to later submit PDF copies for that purpose.

Also on the agenda for discussion are some proposed changes to the rules governing post-trial practice, including complete rewrites of the rules governing motions for new trial and revisions to the rules governing the requests for findings of fact and conclusions of law.