Vt. Memo to the Bar, Sept. 23, 2026

OFFICE OF THE COURT ADMINISTRATOR

THERESE CORSONES, ESQ. Mailing Address

State Court Administrator Office of the Court Administrator

Therese.Corsones@vtcourts.gov 109 State Street

Montpelier, VT 05609-0701

Telephone (802) 828-3278

FAX: 802 828-3457

www.vermontjudiciary.org

TO: Members of the Vermont Bar

FROM: Teri Corsones, Esq., State Court Administrator

RE: Electronic Filing Platform- Use of Special Characters in File Names

DATE: September 23, 2026

The Judiciary is transitioning to a new eFileVT filing platform, known as eFile & Serve (EFS). This

platform was developed using feedback from legal professionals as well as internal e-filing

experts, with the goal of improving usability and overall filing experience.

The current platform, Odyssey File and Serve (OFS), will remain available until end-of-day

September 25th.

As you begin using the new efiling system, (eFile - Landing Page), please be aware that special

characters in document filenames may cause an error during the filing process.

When saving a document to your computer for filing, filers should use simple filenames

containing only letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens, or underscores. Avoid using special

characters in the filename.

Characters that have been identified as potentially causing problems include:

• Ampersand: &

• Apostrophes, including smart/curly apostrophes: ' ’

• Quotation marks, including smart/curly quotes: " “ ”

• Square brackets: []

• Less-than/greater-than symbols: < >

• Accented or other non-ASCII characters, such as ñ or é

• Non-printable or control characters, which may be introduced when copying and pasting

content from applications such as Microsoft Word, Outlook, or PDFs

Example: Instead of saving a document as Smith & O'Connor’s Motion [Final].pdf, save it as

Smith_OConnor_Motion_Final.pdf.

Please remember that this issue relates to the name of the document file being attached to the

filing, not necessarily the Filing Code itself. If a filing generates an error and the document

filename contains a special character, try renaming the document using only standard letters

and numbers (with spaces, hyphens, or underscores) and then attach the renamed document.

At this time, the system does not have a formally defined list of every character that is

prohibited. Therefore, to minimize filing errors, filers are encouraged to use simple filenames

without special characters.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact efilesupport@vtcourts.gov