Virginia County Partners With Simplifile to Offer e-Recording

October 29, 2013

Virginia’s Smyth County is now accepting electronic land documents for recording through Simplifile, an e-recording service provider.

“Like businesses everywhere, we are relying less and less on paper,” said Smyth County Clerk John H. Graham. “Just as folks now do their banking and shopping online, our customers want to do more of their legal transactions electronically. E-Recording certain land records allows us to begin to meet that need.”

With the availability of e-recording, customers including title companies, banks, attorneys, lien filers, and others who do business with the Smyth County clerk’s office, will be able to quickly prepare or scan, upload, and submit land documents for recording online.

“Before e-recording, customers had to drive to the county to deliver their documents or send them by express mail or courier service, and it took several days or weeks for documents to be recorded and returned back to the submitter,” said Paul Clifford, president of Simplifile. “Now, customers can have their time-sensitive documents recorded significantly faster and receive notification if there are any errors, so they can quickly fix and resubmit without having to pay postage for rejected documents.”

Other benefits of e-recording include increased document security, ACH payment processing, and fewer rejected documents.

“The future for court systems, as it is for the whole business community, is increasingly digital,” Graham added.

With the addition of Smyth County, Virginia now has 10 e-recording jurisdictions, joining more than 960 additional counties across the nation that have implemented this service.


Contact ALTA at 202-296-3671 or communications@alta.org.