The Indiana Supreme Court has issued 14 orders amending various Indiana rules.

The orders are file stamped Sept. 21 and were posted Thursday. Many of the changes involve minor administrative updates, although some amendments are more significant, including doubling the filing fee of relators when submitting an original action application to the Supreme Court Administrator. It will now cost $250 to file.

Even though an amendment to Administrative Rule 3 changes the Indiana judicial districts from 14 to 26 for purposes of judicial administration, the justices decided to leave the current structure of the Pro Bono Committees in Indiana at 14. The justices want to give the Indiana Pro Bono Commission and district committees time to study the effect of the new 26 districts on their operations and report on that to the court by Dec. 31, 2011. The 26 new judicial districts are effective Jan. 1, 2011.

Many of the orders were amended to include using the date a motion, judgment, or notice is noted in the Chronological Case Summary as the trigger date for filing appeals or other motions.

The administrative rules have been amended to require all trial courts to use case numbers that include the year and month in the second part of the case number. This is to make it easier to collect case filing statistics for periods of less than one year. The amendment also asks trial courts with the ability to do so to extend the last part of the cause number to six digits unless it requires reprogramming the court’s existing electronic case management system.

The Indiana court’s website has a complete list of the rules that were amended. All changes become effective Jan. 1, 2011.