Zombie Court Rules: Diskettes, Typewriters and Netscape Navigator
Courts rarely rewrite a rule only to take out an old machine, so the machine stays in the sentence. The rules below are in documents that courts have online today, and they mention diskettes, typewriters, mimeographs, pagers and the Netscape Navigator browser.
For Halloween, here are the court rules that still describe technology most offices stopped using years ago.
A rule that mentions an old machine does not prove that the court still wants it, because a court can stop following a sentence without removing it. The clerk's office or the judge's courtroom deputy can say whether an old requirement still applies, and the answer belongs in the case file.
Diskettes and WordPerfect
Rule 205.5 of the Venango County, Pennsylvania local rules of civil procedure encourages filers to send their papers to the court by email or floppy disk as well as filing them with the prothonotary, the county's clerk for civil cases.
In addition to properly filing all pleadings and other legal papers with the Prothonotary, parties are encouraged, but not required, to submit any and all pleadings and other legal papers to the court via email or floppy disk.
An order for electronic filing in asbestos injury cases goes further. It is on the website of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, and the posted scan still has a fax header dated August 25, 2003. The order says what a party that did not join the e-filing system must bring to the clerk's office.
If a party elects not to be a Participant (hereinafter, "Non-Participant"), that party must bring a 3½ inch diskette containing the documents to be filed in any pending case to the Clerk's office to be uploaded by the party into the eFiling system.
Judge Jennifer Edgeworth of the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas asks for proposed jury questions and instructions by email in Microsoft Word format, and the next sentence in her procedures still refers to a disk.
The pleading on this disk should be in 12 pitch font, free of any typographical emphasis i.e. bolding, all caps, underlining, italics, etc., and labeled with the case style and submitting party's name.
WordPerfect is a word processor that many law offices used before Microsoft Word replaced it, and a few judges still ask for it by version number. Judge Keith P. Ellison of the Southern District of Texas updated his court procedures in May 2026, and they ask for one chart in WordPerfect 8.0 or higher. Version 8.0 came out in 1997.
Parties to submit Claim Construction Chart in WordPerfect 8.0 (or higher) format in compliance with P.R. 4-5(d).
Judge Lee H. Rosenthal, in the same court, asks for the proposed jury charge "on a CD compatible with Corel WordPerfect 11 word processing." Version 11 came out in 2003.
Typewriters, mimeographs and microfiche
Rule 205.2(a) of the Berks County, Pennsylvania rules of civil procedure covers the physical form of papers filed with the prothonotary, and it includes a sentence for typewritten text. Pitch is the number of characters a typewriter prints per inch, and letter quality is a term from the era of dot matrix printers.
All typewritten text shall be in ten (10) or twelve (12) pitch and of letter quality.
Adams County, Pennsylvania lists the ways a paper may be produced in Rule 801 of its rules of judicial administration. A mimeograph is a stencil duplicating machine that photocopiers replaced.
Papers should be written in ink, printed, typewritten, photocopied, mimeographed or otherwise mechanically reproduced.
Franklin County, Ohio has a local rule that says file copies of computer-generated notices are to be microfiched. Microfiche is a sheet of film that holds tiny photographs of document pages.
File copies of computer-generated notices which are produced in duplicate of any event scheduled before this Court shall be filed with the Clerk, microfiched, and docketed with microfiche coordinates.
Fax paper and telephones
The Galveston County, Texas district courts have a local rule for filings that arrive by fax, and it says what kind of paper a faxed filing can be printed on. Thermal paper is the coated paper that older fax machines used, and its print fades over time.
Documents electronically transmitted for filing will be received by the clerk on a plain paper facsimile and printed by a laser printer, thereby rendering the copy of archival quality. No document printed on thermal paper shall be filed.
Federal courts have fax rules of their own, and we listed them in an earlier post.
Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York has procedures for telephone appearances that took effect on December 7, 2016. They say which phones a party may not use to call in.
To ensure the quality of the record, the use of car phones, cellular phones, speaker phones, public telephone booths, or phones in other public places is prohibited except in the most extreme emergencies.
A standing order on trial procedures for Civil Division AH of Florida's Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in Palm Beach County has the Clerk of the Circuit Court's exhibit pre-marking guidelines attached. The guidelines say what happens to long distance calls, and they say that the clerk's office will fax the exhibit tag template to the lawyer.
If no one is available to answer your call, please leave a message including your case number, style of case, fax number, and telephone number. All long distance calls will be returned collect.
Pagers, VCRs and overhead projectors
In 2018 the Southern District of Florida replaced five earlier orders on cellular phones and electronic equipment in its courthouses. The new order still lists pagers, personal data assistants and tape recorders among the devices that are prohibited in the district's federal courthouses unless an exception applies.
All electronic devices including but not limited to Cellular Phones, Pagers, Personal Data Assistants (PDA), Laptop Computers, Tape Recorders, etc., are prohibited from being brought into any federal courthouse facility within the Southern District of Florida with the following exceptions:
Judge Loretta A. Preska has individual practices dated April 1, 2025, and they ask for "General Purpose Computing Device Orders (for cellphones, laptops, and BlackBerrys)" at least five days before a trial.
Rule 10.16 of the Placer County, California local rules covers VCR and DVD players. The rule is marked as effective on July 1, 2005, and the set of local rules that contains it was revised on January 1, 2026.
Attorneys wishing to play a VCR or DVD in court are advised to contact the appropriate clerk's office to inquire about availability in advance.
Judge Kenly Kiya Kato has a criminal trial order in the Central District of California. It lists "tape or compact disk players" and "overhead projectors" among the equipment that counsel may arrange to install in the courtroom, and it asks for five business days of notice.
Netscape Navigator
Rule 171A of the Rules of the Delaware Court of Chancery covers briefs filed on CD-ROM, and it says which programs must be able to open them. AOL stopped supporting Netscape in 2008.
CD-ROM briefs must either come with their own viewing programs or be viewable using (a) a program such as Adobe Acrobat that is downloadable from the Internet at no cost to the user, (b) both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator or (c) Microsoft Word.
The counts are from October 31, 2026. A court is counted when at least one of its rules on Court Rules contains the word. The words are fax or facsimile, typewriter or typewritten, WordPerfect, and diskette or floppy. Each quote was compared with the court's own document on October 31, 2026.