Travis County District Courts Filing Rules

All motions except dispositive motions must also certify either that counsel conferred in good faith to resolve or narrow the issues, or that reasonable efforts to confer were made but unsuccessful.

Documents provided to the Court should be indexed and uploaded to Box and, if paper copies are used, placed in binders (with a copy of the index provided to opposing counsel), and should include: o Operative pleadings, if pertinent to the hearing o Motions, responses, and replies, together with their exhibits, if any o Controlling case law with pertinent passages highlighted

and should include: o Operative pleadings, if pertinent to the hearing o Motions, responses, and replies, together with their exhibits, if any o Controlling case law with pertinent passages highlighted

Do not use “Movant” or “Non-Movant” as exhibit party designations.

To remove an MSJ setting, a party must file a Notice of Withdrawal that includes the date the original MSJ was filed and the date of the original setting.

Requests for ex parte relief or any other emergency matter, except requests by the Department of Family Protective Services, must be presented to the Duty Judge by email to that court's submission email address, which may be found on each court's webpage.

Emergency matters (other than specially assigned cases) must be directed to the designated Duty Judge through the Duty Judge's staff, who is listed on the Travis County civil district dockets page.

Court staff may not be contacted to set hearings or trials or to make docket announcements for Central Docket matters; the Local Rules govern those procedures.

A party filing a Notice of Withdrawal must email the Court at 250.submission@traviscountytx.gov with a file-stamped copy of the notice attached.

Technical assistance with Box is available from Courts-Help by email at courts-help@traviscountytx.gov.

Filing a document with the District Clerk does not forward it to the judge; a party who needs the judge to receive a document must provide it directly to the judge rather than simply filing it.

Each lawyer or litigant is responsible for ensuring that all witnesses they intend to call receive notice of how to join the Zoom hearing.

Exhibits cannot be downloaded from Box, so parties must exchange exhibits with each other on their own prior to any hearing or trial.

Trial exhibits must be exchanged with opposing counsel prior to trial.

Administrative appeals must be fully briefed by the parties in advance of the hearing on the merits.

Proposed jury questions and instructions must be submitted at the pretrial conference or on or before the first day of trial by Box upload and/or email to the Staff Attorney.

Responses to MSJ motions must be filed within 21 days after the motion is filed, and failure to respond is taken as a representation of no opposition.

Exhibits must be uploaded to Box at least 24 hours before a hearing or trial.

Proposed jury questions and instructions are due at the pretrial conference or on or before the first day of trial.

The word "entered" must not be used to show the date on which a judgment, decree, or order is signed.

Scanned exhibits must be verified as searchable using OCR before uploading to Box.

Pages within each pre-marked exhibit should be separately numbered so the Court can quickly locate specific pages.

Documents provided to the Court should be indexed and uploaded to Box and, if paper copies are used, placed in binders (with a copy of the index provided to opposing counsel)

Both the movant and nonmovant must email a draft proposed order in Word and PDF formats to 250.submission@traviscountytx.gov.

Each party must deliver their brief either digitally or in hard copy, as instructed by the assigned judge.

Non-evidentiary materials may be uploaded to Box and should go in the party’s Other Materials folder, not the Exhibit folder.

Uploading an exhibit to Box is not an offer into evidence; unoffered exhibits will be deleted from the record, and exhibits not intended for evidence need not be uploaded.

The web forms on the website for the 250th District Court should be used to request hearings, request jury trials, and announce readiness to proceed in cases that are docketed in the 250th District Court. Unlike the Central Docket, the 250th District Court does not currently have a "lawyer-driven" docket. Parties do not schedule cases in the 250th District Court—the Court does.

Exhibits must be submitted only via Box and not through any other channel.

If a party must forward a document to a judge or wants to bring it to the judge’s attention, the party must deliver a file-marked courtesy copy to the judge’s staff; filing it with the District Clerk alone is insufficient.

Documents should be uploaded electronically to the Court's Box account, but if you also want to use paper exhibits, you must bring at least two courtesy paper copies of documents you want the Court to review (one for the Court and one for the Staff Attorney).

If unable to upload electronic exhibits, parties must bring no fewer than three indexed, binder-bound paper copies of each exhibit offered into evidence (for the Court, the witness who receives the original, and opposing counsel).

Counsel are encouraged to bring a paper copy of their proposed order to the hearing for the Judge's signature.

No hearings may be set during the week before a bench or jury trial, except hearings on motions for continuance.

Beginning June 1, 2026, all filed motions for summary judgment will be automatically set for hearing by submission to the Court on the same dates set forth in the Travis County Standing Order for Motions for Summary Judgments in Civil and Family Cases. If a party views oral argument as helpful to the Court, the motion or response may include a request for it. The Court will notify the parties if the Court wishes to schedule oral argument.

Attorneys are strongly encouraged to confer by phone or in person before hearings on non-dispositive issues, especially discovery disputes.

Matters that the court determines cannot reasonably be heard within the announced time will be rescheduled at the court's discretion.

A responding party seeking more time to respond to a summary judgment motion must file a motion, notify the Court by email, and state in the motion title whether it is unopposed, agreed to, or opposed.

The District Clerk maintains files, docket sheets, and minutes as confidential records in every adoption suit and every suit in which an authorized agency seeks termination of the parent-child relationship.

Proposed or draft orders may not be filed alone; they may be filed only as attachments to other pleadings.

PDF proposed orders may optionally be attached as an exhibit to the motion in the same filing.

All necessary evidence must be included in the submission email.

A $20 personal bond fee applies when the bail amount is below $1,350.