Updating Your Contact Information

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The Local Rules require that everyone registered to file or receive service of documents electronically through the Court’s electronic filing system must maintain current and accurate contact information in the CM/ECF System.  Local Rule 5-4.8.1.  Users must update their online account profiles whenever this information changes.  (See instructions below.)  Attorneys practicing before the Court, as well as pro se litigants with pending cases, must complete such updates within 5 days of any change in personal contact information.  See Local Rule 83-2.4. 

In addition, if you have pending cases, you must also separately file and serve notice of any change in contact information within 5 days of the change in each pending case.  To do this, use Form G-06 (“Notice of Change of Attorney Business or Contact Information”).  When filing that form electronically, use the Civil/Criminal Change of Attorney Information filing event, which appears under the Notices events category. 

As of February 18, 2020, all updates to a primary user’s contact information in the CM/ECF System must be made through the PACER website.  Instructions for making such updates follow immediately below.  However, users may still add, update, or delete secondary email addresses associated with a primary user’s account (for instance, when a lawyer wants to add a paralegal or secretary’s email to receive copies of all emails sent to the lawyer by the CM/ECF System) in CM/ECF.  Click here to jump to the instructions for updating secondary email addresses.

Instructions for Updating Your Contact Information to Comply with Local Rule 5-4.8.1

Go to the PACER website (www.pacer.gov).

Click “Manage My Account” in the upper right corner of the screen.

Log in using your individual PACER username and password.

When the “Manage My Account” page appears, click on the “Maintenance” tab.

Click one of the following options, depending on what information you want to update:

  1. Update Personal Information

    Choose the “Update Personal Information” option to update your name (including prefix, generation, and suffix).

  2. Update Primary Email Address and Email Noticing and Frequency

    Choose the “Update E-filer Email Noticing and Frequency” option to update:

    • Primary Email
    • Email Noticing and Frequency (once per day or daily summary including email format)

    You will have the option of choosing which of the NextGen courts with which you are registered should receive your updated information. You must choose to send this information to the Central District of California. Once you do, any change you make to your name or email address will be applied to, and reflected on the docket for, every case in the Central District, past, present, or future, open or closed, in which you are listed as counsel of record. There is no way to update your name or email address in some cases but not others. If you want to stop receiving NEFs in a case in which you are listed as counsel of record, you must withdraw from the case.

    FAILURE TO UPDATE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS MAY RESULT IN THE TERMINATION OF YOUR E-FILING PRIVILEGES!

    If you do not inform the Court of a change in your email address, and Notices of Electronic Filing sent to that address bounce back as undeliverable, YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WILL BE DELETED FROM THE SYSTEM, YOUR E-FILING PRIVILEGES WILL BE TERMINATED, AND YOU WILL NO LONGER RECEIVE ELECTRONIC SERVICE OF FILINGS IN ANY OF YOUR CASES. If this happens to you, contact the CM/ECF Helpdesk to reactivate your account and then immediately update your email address in the system.

  3. Update Address Information

    Choose the “Update Address Information” option to update:

    • Name of law firm, if any
    • Personal or work address
    • Phone numbers

    For this information, you will have some options regarding which cases should be updated with the changed information. For instance, you could choose to apply this information to all cases, to only pending and future cases, or just to future cases.

Instructions for Updating Your Secondary Email Addresses

Log in to CM/ECF, using your PACER login and password.  Click “Utilities” on the menu bar at the top of the screen.  Choose “Maintain Your Email Address” from the list of links presented.  The next screen will display all email addresses associated with the account.  You will not be able to change the primary email address (if you try, you will be re-directed to the PACER website), but you will be able to add or edit secondary email addresses.

  1. To add an address, click on “add new email address,” enter the address, and respond to the questions under “Configuration Options.”
  2. To remove an address, click on the secondary email address you wish to remove and delete the address in the “Configuration Options” window.
  3. Click on “Submit all changes”; if there is another submit page, click that as well.
  4. Do not use the back button or changes will not take effect.
  5. Do not duplicate a primary email address as a secondary email address.

Remember to click the “Submit” button to submit any modifications and/or additions made.

NOTE:  After successfully making an update, the system will display the “Select Cases To Be Updated” screen.  The user should select the cases in which the update is to be applied.  The changes will be recorded only in the cases selected.  Use caution when selecting “Update all,” as Notices of Electronic Filing will be sent to the updated email addresses for all cases in which you have not been terminated, even if you are no longer actively involved with the case.

Configuration options” and “Case-specific options” are presented when you click on a primary or secondary email address. 

Under “Configuration options,” primary and secondary email addresses are automatically set to receive notices, and that setting should not be changed.  If an attorney does not want a particular secondary email address to receive notices, he or she should remove that secondary email address, instead of changing the setting under the “Configuration options.”  A secondary email address that has been designated not to receive notices will be removed by Court staff.

Under “Configuration options,” you may choose to receive a separate notice for every filing or a daily summary report of filings in all cases for which that email recipient has been designated.  You may also choose the format of notices (HTML or text) and whether the email recipient will receive general announcement notices from the Court (recommended).

Case-specific options” permits attorneys to add cases for which they are not counsel of record but in which they would like to receive notices of electronic filing.  It permits attorneys to remove any such cases when they no longer wish to receive notices.  “Case-specific options” also permits attorneys to select cases in which they would like notices to be sent using a different delivery method (i.e., per filing or a summary report) than the one designated for all cases.

Click the Submit button to submit any modifications and/or additions made.