The CyberBest electronic appeal program is the latest in a suite of overall electronic filing programs to be completed. The other components in this system are an E-filing application for lawyers that enables them to automate the filing of case information with the clerk of the court and an electronic imaging system that combines all documents related to a case into one easy to manage multi-page electronic document.

The courts world is, and has been, a world of paper for 2000 years. The process of automating courts nationally has been long and difficult. Standards had to be created because they did not exist. Courts did not see any need to share information with other agencies therefore there was no method for transmitting information to other agencies outside of the court.

History and precedence are major parts of the court process, making courts resistant to change. Courts are based on an adversarial relationship that depends on all interested parties to make sure that things get done the right way. Judges and juries deliberate. All of this takes time. Time, in the past, was always on the side of the court.

Today, that has changed. Our litigious society is overwhelming our court system with an ever increasing case load. State budgets are strapped. Courts budget requests are no longer automatically granted. New and innovative automation methods must be implemented to offset these difficulties. National trends in court case filings continue upward. In 2005, "For the second consecutive year, the combined incoming caseloads of state courts in the U.S. and Puerto Rico were approximately 100 million cases," . . . . an 11 percent increase in incoming cases reported nationally. 

In trial court cases appealed to an Appellate Court, the clerk must prepare a Record on Appeal (ROA) which may be extremely large, the requirement for the court clerk to process all of the paperwork generated by the case takes a significant amount of time. According to the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, "The electronic appeals system will save the courts a tremendous amount of time. Under the current procedure, the clerks' office must spend protracted time preparing the record on appeal. Additionally, the clerk's office must pay significant postal and shipping costs to send the records to the appellate court. With, the clerk's office will only be required to scan in the pertinent documents and organize the record on appeal and then submit it to the appellate court electronically."