Big Changes Coming to the Arizona Rules of Civil Appellate Procedure. Comment Deadline June 13, 2014.

The Administrative Office of the Courts has now filed the amended petition to “comprehensively amend ARCAP.”  The petition and amended petition are available here.  The deadline for additional comments is June 13, 2014.  The project began as an effort to modernize Arizona’s appellate rules as has been done with the federal rules.  Mark Meltzer with the AOC took the lead in preparing the revised rules with input provided by a large number of judges, staff attorneys, and appellate practitioners, including attorneys from Osborn Maledon.   Among the substantive changes, the proposed rules include provisions for electronic filing, and they now explicitly encourage parties to use bookmarks and hyperlinks in electronically filed documents.  The Arizona Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to adopt the proposed amendments at its August rules meeting.