Doxpop - Tools for Attorneys and Public Information Researchers: 2018

Monday, December 31, 2018

Happy New Year! (And how to get help if it's not so happy so far.)


Doxpop's support staff will be heading for home an hour early (5 PM EST) on New Year's Eve, and we'll be closed all day on New Year's Day.

That means we won't be monitoring our phones or online chat between 5PM EST on December 31st and 8AM EST on January 2nd.

We understand that sometimes an emergency arises where you really need help during holidays. If you have a situation that can't wait, please send us an email with a brief description of your problem and a phone number where we can reach you to help. One of our managers will be checking email several times during New Year's Day to respond to emergencies.

Please be respectful when using this option, as our manager will have to cease his merrymaking in order to respond.

Have a great and safe celebration. We look forward to a great 2019 with all of you!

Friday, December 21, 2018

Merry Christmas from all of us at Doxpop. Here is when we'll be closed for the holiday.


Doxpop offices will be closed Monday, December 24th and Tuesday, December 25th for the Christmas holiday,

With that said, we understand that sometimes you have to deal with an emergency situation during a holiday so here's how to get help over the holiday:

We will not be monitoring phone lines, so you must use email. One of our managers will be checking email periodically throughout the Christmas break. If you have a real emergency, please send an email to support@doxpop.com that contains a brief description of the problem and a phone number we can call to reach you.

Please be respectful when using this option. It's for real emergencies that can't wait until Wednesday morning.

Our offices will re-open at 8am EST on Wednesday, December 26th. 


Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Welcome Lake County to e-filing! Now is the time to get your service contact attached to your cases.


On Wednesday, December 12th Lake County joined the list of counties in the Indiana e-file system. 

This is just a reminder that if you have open cases in any of these courts now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Lake county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.

We have a quick video showing you how it works if you click on this link.
Note: Public service contacts are now available in your service contact tools as well!


For more information about how private and public service contacts may affect you, visit our initial and follow up blog posts linked below:

Friday, November 30, 2018

Wells and Miami County Converts to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected.


During the weekend of December 1st, the Courts in Wells & Miami County will convert to the Odyssey case tracking system, this means their Case Management System is now administered by Indiana Trial Court Technology.

This move does not affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system from the Division of State Court Administration. Your access to Wells and Miami County court information through Doxpop will not be interrupted during this transition. Wells County e-filers, please read this post regarding e-file during the transition. 

A few of the services we provide will look odd during the transition because there will be a four-six week period when both the old data and the new data are available. This is longer than when this transition typically happens due to the holidays. In particular:
  • If you use the personal calendar feature to keep track of hearings connected to your Bar ID, you will see two colors for Wells or Miami County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
  • When you look at our "County Details Page", you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
  • When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.
  • If you use any of our "watch" services to keep an eye on cases or people of interest, we will be moving those watches over so they point to the cases and people that are a part of the Odyssey data feed. We run a process to convert these every hour, but it is possible for notification of events to slip through the cracks between conversion runs so you may want to periodically do a manual check between now and January 14th. After then, we'll be back to normal.
Tax warrants will not be affected at all by this transition.

Finally, one deficiency in the Odyssey system is that financial information is not exported in their data feed, so that detail will not be available after the transition. We regularly ask that TCT add this to the data feed, but so far, we are told that it is not allowed because the clerks using the Odyssey system have requested that TCT not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell TCT differently so we can get the information back online.

As always, we are available to answer any questions in person, so don't hesitate to call support at 866-369-7671 if you have any questions.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Wells county e-filing: Important information while they transition to the Odyssey case management system.


Wells County will begin a transition to the Odyessy case management system on November 29th.

This transition will have a limiting effect on e-filing through the weekend. Here is the notice that was provided by the state court administration regarding this transfer:
--
Beginning THU, NOV 29 at 4:00pm through SAT, DEC 1 at 1:00pm, you will be able to e-file only into Wells cases in which you have e-filed before. Filings into other cases or that open a new case will not be possible during this time.
--
If you need to file into a Wells case and it does not pull up in e-file you will have to file it directly with the clerk. The same process will apply for any new cases.

This transition will only affect e-filing temporarily.

All other court case information and Doxpop features will remain unaffected. 

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Doxpop offices will close 5pm EST Wednesday, November 21st in observance of Thanksgiving.

We understand that sometimes you have to deal with an emergency situation during a holiday so here's how to get help over the holiday:

We will not be monitoring phone lines, so you must use email. One of our managers will be checking email periodically throughout the Thanksgiving break. If you have a real emergency, please send an email to support@doxpop.com that contains a brief description of the problem and phone number we can call to reach you.

Please be respectful when using this option. It's for real emergencies that can't wait until Monday morning.

Our offices will re-open at 8am on Monday, November 26th. 

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Keeping you on top of your court dates!


Introducing a new feature with the Doxpop Calendar.

Featured now on the 'court cases' tab at the top of the dashboard is the number of court calendar events you have scheduled for today and tomorrow*.

If you want more details or just want a quick way to get to the 'my calendar' page, just click on this spot and you will be taken directly to your calendar.

A couple things to note:

*On Friday and over the weekend Tomorrow will actually be Monday's count.
Also, this count does include canceled events so make sure you check the calendar before you run off to court.

For more about using the Doxpop calendars visit our help pages. 

If you have any questions feel free to contact us at support@doxpop.com or call us 8am-6pm EST at 866-369-7671

Monday, October 15, 2018

Putnam County Converts to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected.


During the weekend of October 13th, the Courts in Putnam County converted to the Odyssey case tracking system, this means their Case Management System is now administered by Indiana Trial Court Technology.

This move does not affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system from the Division of State Court Administration. Your access to Putnam County court information through Doxpop will not be interrupted during this transition.

A few of the services we provide will look odd during the transition because there will be a four week period when both the old data and the new data are available. In particular:
  • If you use the personal calendar feature to keep track of hearings connected to your Bar ID, you will see two colors for Wabash County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
  • When you look at our "County Details Page", you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
  • When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.
  • If you use any of our "watch" services to keep an eye on cases or people of interest, we will be moving those watches over so they point to the cases and people that are a part of the Odyssey data feed. We run a process to convert these every hour, but it is possible for notification of events to slip through the cracks between conversion runs so you may want to periodically do a manual check between now and November 11th. After then, we'll be back to normal.
Tax warrants will not be affected at all by this transition.

Finally, one deficiency in the Odyssey system is that financial information is not exported in their data feed, so that detail will not be available after the transition. We regularly ask that TCT add this to the data feed, but so far, we are told that it is not allowed because the clerks using the Odyssey system have requested that TCT not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell TCT differently so we can get the information back online.

As always, we are available to answer any questions in person, so don't hesitate to call support at 866-369-7671 if you have any questions.

Monday, September 24, 2018

Wabash County Converts to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected.


During the weekend of September 22nd, the Courts in Wabash County will convert to the Odyssey case tracking system, this means their Case Management System is now administered by Indiana Trial Court Technology.

This move does not affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system from the Division of State Court Administration. Your access to Wabash County court information through Doxpop will not be interrupted during this transition.

A few of the services we provide will look odd during the transition because there will be a four week period when both the old data and the new data are available. In particular:
  • If you use the personal calendar feature to keep track of hearings connected to your Bar ID, you will see two colors for Wabash County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
  • When you look at our "County Details Page", you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
  • When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.
  • If you use any of our "watch" services to keep an eye on cases or people of interest, we will be moving those watches over so they point to the cases and people that are a part of the Odyssey data feed. We run a process to convert these every hour, but it is possible for notification of events to slip through the cracks between conversion runs so you may want to periodically do a manual check between now and October 22nd. After then, we'll be back to normal.
Tax warrants will not be affected at all by this transition.

Finally, one deficiency in the Odyssey system is that financial information is not exported in their data feed, so that detail will not be available after the transition. We regularly ask that TCT add this to the data feed, but so far, we are told that it is not allowed because the clerks using the Odyssey system have requested that TCT not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell TCT differently so we can get the information back online.

As always, we are available to answer any questions in person, so don't hesitate to call support at 866-369-7671 if you have any questions.

Looking for the court calendar for a specific court?


In our last blog post about the updated look, I forgot to point out where we moved the court calendars, a feature many of you count on.

Previously, you could access a court calendar through the court cases tab where we listed all the courts and their coverage periods. To clean up the tab for our increasing number of mobile device users we removed that info from the tab itself but not from the site.

Now you can find that info, and table of counties, by clicking the Indiana map either on the welcome tab in the court case section or on the court case tab. Either link will open in a new window with the court coverage list (just scroll down), along with the link to the county details page you are used to.




Thursday, September 20, 2018

We've got some new looks and some new tools!


Our developers have been doing some great coding to streamline your work and we now have some great new features ready for your use.

A much simpler look!

The first thing you may notice is how streamlined we've made each "tab" on our site. If you look below you'll see our new dashboard feature to the left (outlined in red) then in the middle if you want to know more about that particular service, just click the green bar. The search widget is in the same place but with our coverage map to the right. Want more details on coverage? Just click the map.


Let's talk about the exciting new feature- The Doxpop Dashboard

For each of the records services we offer you will now see a dashboard to the left of that service's 'tab'. This dashboard provides at-a-glance access to some of the things you care about most. This is pretty self-explanatory so we won't go into detail. Instead, just take a look at what dashboard for each of the three records services look like below:

Simply click the item on the dashboard and you will be taken right to the place were you can view related details.

We are also working on a dashboard for e-filers, so look for that useful addition in the near future!

These dashboards were developed based on customer feedback. We really appreciate our customers who have taken the time to suggest improvements. Keep 'those suggestions coming!

Update: Looking for the court calendar for a specific court?

See our blog post here. 



Should you ever have any questions about Doxpop's features and services, or you just want to give us a suggestion, email us at support@doxpop.com or give us a call at 866-369-7671.

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

New: Clear e-filing forms with just a push of a button!


You asked and we delivered! Now you can clear your e-filing forms with the click of a button on both the new filing and subsequent filing pages.

To do this simply use the [Clear this Form] button at the top of the filing area. 


New Case Page

Existing Case Page

Then just confirm that is what you want to do. 



A quick process will run to clear all of your selections and you can start again. 

Monday, September 10, 2018

The problem with fee calculations is ongoing, but we expect a fix Wednesday evening!


Update: We have been notified that the State is going to release a fix for this problem at 7 PM Wednesday evening (Sept 12th).

Back on September 4th, we learned that an update on the EFM (the State's side of the e-filing system) done over Labor Day weekend broke the fee calculations for all EFSPs.

The first communication from the State about this issue indicated that it might be fixed in the next weekend update, but that time has come and gone with no fix, so at this point, we're in the sad position of having to wait for someone else to finish a repair, with no prediction of when it will happen.

In the meantime, you can still e-file... Just ignore the incorrect fee calculations and file as you normally would. The clerks have been instructed by the State to include a manual step in their process that will correct the fees before the filing goes through.

Some important notes related to this issue:
  • It doesn't happen with every case. Some cases will look fine.
  • If you are paying for Sheriff's service on a civil filing, that payment will still show up in your initial fees. That means you can still use the first "Notice of Electronic Filing" email that you receive as proof of payment when you provide the papers to the Sheriff for Service.
  • You can still access the details of your fees in the "My Electronic Filings" Page on the Doxpop system. The difference will be that the fees will not show up correctly until the case is accepted.  This is important if you need to be able to account for fees billed back to your client.
  • The extra manual step will make processing harder for the Clerk's offices until this problem is resolved, so expect some delays in processing, and please be patient with the Clerks. This isn't their fault, and it is making their work difficult too!
  • Appellate filings are not affected by this issue.
  • If this problem has caused you to miss a deadline and you need to file an Affidavit of Inability to E-file per Trial Rule 86(N), take a look at the bottom of our previous post for a few details on where to find that rule.
As soon as we hear more about a final fix from the folks on the State side of the system, we'll provide an update. Hang in there!

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Did the fee calculation issue on Tuesday, Sept 4th cause you to miss a filing deadline? Here is what to do.


NOTE: This article will be updated as we learn more 

UPDATE as of 2:45pm 9/5:
Message from Indiana Courts:

"We promised an update today regarding the e-filing issue related to the collection of filing fees. Clerks continue to have the ability to accept new cases. This weekend we plan to make a system upgrade."

So our previous instruction still stands that you can continue to file and the clerks have been instructed to process and accept the filings. When the clerk processes the filing to the proper code, the filing fee should update and your MEF page will then reflect the proper amount. 

Note: We previously noted the accepted email will have the correct amount. This was an error and is not the case as this email does not have payment information. Rather you can reveiw your 'My Electronic Filings' page for the correct charged amount. 


-------

On the morning of Tuesday, September 4th while working on a customer call Doxpop noticed that new case filings in e-file were calculating fees at $0 which is not correct. We quickly worked to verify this was an issue affecting all e-filers regardless of their service provider and then notified the appropriate contacts with the e-file manager and the state trial court helpdesk. 

Not too long after that, the state did send the following message:

"E-filing is currently experiencing intermittent issues related to the collection of filing fees. As a result, new cases may be rejected by the clerk. We are working with Tyler Technologies to correct this issue. We will provide an update. If problems prevent filing, refer to Trial Rule 86(N)."

We will note based on customer reports this may be affecting fee collection on the clerk's side for filings that were done in past days as well. 

As a result of this message we felt it was important to once again communicate our guidance for handling time-sensitive filings during an e-file "outage" under Trial Rule 86(N).

If you missed a deadline due to this issue, take a look at Trial Rule 86(N)(1), which essentially provides for a one-day extension when a lengthy e-filing system outage prevents filers from meeting a deadline.

We expect that the Trial Courts will all be aware of the scope and timing of this statewide outage via direct communication from Trial Court Technology. However, if the court you are working with requires a statement from Doxpop to attach as an exhibit to the motion described in TR 86(N)(1)(d), please let us know and we'll be happy to supply documentation in support of your motion. (Simply attaching a screen print of this blog post may be sufficient.)

On the appellate side, take a look at Rule 68(M)(1)(d), which appears to be nearly identical to the Trial Court rule on this topic.

Friday, August 31, 2018

A reminder that Doxpop offices will be closed Monday, September 3rd in observance of Labor Day.

We understand that sometimes you have to deal with an emergency situation during a holiday so here's how to get help over the holiday:

We will not be monitoring phone lines, so you must use email. One of our managers will be checking email periodically throughout the day. If you have a real emergency, please send an email to support@doxpop.com that contains a brief description of the problem and phone number we can call to reach you.

Please be respectful when using this option. It's for real emergencies that can't wait until Tuesday morning.

Monday, August 27, 2018

Appellate court e-filing becomes mandatory on September 1st.


On September 1, a change to the appellate rules will require that appeals be initiated via e-filing. We’ve posted several times, each focusing on one aspect of appellate filings. This post is intended to consolidate our previous advice into one resource.

The Basics:
Filing a Notice of Appeal is simple and not all that different from filing in the trial courts. The main differences are how you prepare your document, how fees are assessed and having the ability to attach any number of service contacts on your initial filing to comply with the multiple service requirements in rule 24(A)(1).

Preparing your Notice of Appeal:
When you are assembling a Notice of Appeal or Motion for Interlocutory Appeal, there are several documents that should be combined into a single PDF file to initiate the appeal. They are:

  1. The Notice of Appeal or Motion for Interlocutory Appeal.
  2. A copy of the judgment or order being appealed.
  3. If you are a public defender, your proof of appointment.
  4. If this is an interlocutory appeal, a copy of the order accepting jurisdiction.
  5. Any other required documents.

Number 5 sounds a bit open-ended, but the underlying concept here is simply that every document that you would be required to file when initiating the appeal conventionally should be combined into a single PDF file when e-filing. This will then be filed as a single lead document. This differs significantly from the process for trial courts, where each document must be a separate PDF file.

From a practical standpoint, this means that if you don't already have software for editing PDF files, it's time to purchase something so you can assemble documents from multiple sources into a single PDF file. We've been working with attorneys who are assembling PDF files for a couple of years now, and here are the PDF editors we've heard good things about:



How fees are shown when you start your filing:
Fees are assigned based on the type of document you are filing instead of the case type. So the fee next to the case type will always show $0 but when you select your filing type when adding the document you will now see the fee associated with the Notice of Appeal filing type. This document-based approach to fee calculation applies to the Court of Appeals, Supreme Court and Tax Court case types. For the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court the fee for a Notice of Appeal is currently $250. For the Tax Court, the fee for filing an Original Tax Appeal is $120.

Guidance on how to handle electronic service when filing an appeal:
When you use the Doxpop system for initiating trial court cases, we limit you to attaching one service contact during that process. However, when initiating an appellate case, you may attach any number of service contacts in order to comply with the appellate rules.

The list of the people/organizations you must serve when initiating an appeal has not changed, and can be found in the Appellate Rule 24. What has changed with e-filing is that you can now serve some of these people or organizations electronically by attaching them to the case when you file the notice of appeal.

When filing a Notice of Appeal, here are some of the people or organizations you may need to serve, and methods of attaching them when it is possible:

  • For represented parties, you will be able to find their counsel using the public service directory and attach them for e-service.
  • You will need to be sure that if required, the parties themselves are notified conventionally, as they will not have public service contacts.
  • The Judge, Clerk and Court Reporter on the original trial court case do not have public service contacts, so these three people will need to be served conventionally. (This also holds true for judges and hearing officers in connection with cases coming from administrative courts.)
  • If the case is criminal, you will always be able to serve the prosecuting attorney via e-service, using the public service contact for the attorney that most recently entered an appearance on behalf of the State. (This may not always be the current prosecuting attorney.)
  • If the case is criminal, you will also be required to serve the Attorney General. To accomplish this, you can attach the public service contact of the currently serving Attorney General. eg: Curtis Hill.
  • For expedited appeals involving children, you have a longer list found in Appellate Rule 14.1. You may find that some of those can be notified via e-service. For instance, county commissioners may have currently retained counsel that will appear on the public service contact list. Some attorneys also serve as a CASA or guardian ad litem and thus may have public service contacts. However, most of the service in this type of appeal will have to be done conventionally.

When you put together your certificate of service, for anyone whose service contact was attached at the time of filing the notice of appeal, note that they were served via "IEFS" with the date of filing.

On rare occasions, an email problem may prevent e-service from occurring, so remember to keep an eye out for any service failure notices, which will arrive via email.

Here's a look at what this section of the filing screen for a Notice of Appeal looks like:




The actual order:
On July 26, an order amending the rules for appellate procedure effective September 1, 2018 was filed.


The quick summary is that previously, the words "conventionally", and in two places "electronically" were used to specify the method of filing the documents initiating an appeal. Those modifiers have now been removed so this section no longer specifies any exception from the general rules for filing.

Rule 68(C)(1) says "Unless otherwise permitted by these rules, all documents submitted for filing in the Indiana Supreme Court or Court of Appeals by an attorney must be filed electronically using the IEFS." (Bolding added by this blogger.)

Have Questions?
Give us a call at 866-369-7671, we are happy to help!


Attorney Bar ID searching is here!


We are happy to announce the release of attorney bar ID searching in court cases allowing users to find all cases that an attorney is listed on just by using the Bar ID. 

This is now available on the court case advanced search page.

Here is what to know about this feature:

  • Only available when the party role "attorney" is selected.
  • Entering a name and bar ID will return results that either match the name or have the Bar ID listed or both. Providing you leave the "Include attorneys with no bar id." checkbox selected.
  • When using only a bar ID, uncheck the "Include attorneys with no bar id." checkbox. 
  • If the attorney you are searching has many cases you may need to narrow criteria either by search region, date period or any other option to avoid reaching our search result limit of 1,000. 

If you have any questions about this or any features on Doxpop please give us a call at 866-369-7671!

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Missing court cases for August 23rd


Court case searchers:

UPDATE: This was resolved in the afternoon of Friday, August 24th. 

During the evening hours of  Wednesday, August 22nd our operations team attempted an application upgrade that subsequently failed around 11pm. As a result of that failure, any court cases filed after that time are not displayed.

Our operations team is working to resolve this and we expect to have all new cases loaded and caught up by Friday evening.

This largely only affects new cases filed Thursday, August 23rd. Most updates made on that day to existing cases are not affected but there may be some information not updated until we have fully processed all the data.

There is a separate issue with Warrick County cases. Warrick County has been experiencing technical issues at the county Courthouse since Monday of this week and we have not been receiving updates from them all week. For this reason, we do not have any Warrick county cases for this week. We believe the technical issue on their end is resolved on their end and expect their cases to be caught up by Friday evening as well.

This does NOT affect e-filing, you still may still e-file on any case that you have the case number for via the e-filing tab.

Questions? Give us a call at 866-369-7671 or email support@doxpop.com.


Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Special Judge Cases and E-Filing.


We are frequently asked if the electronic service provided by the e-filing system can (or should) be used to serve special judges with documents as required by Trial Rule 5(A).

The short answer is No. You must continue to serve documents for special judges conventionally.

The longer answer is that the Court has decided that judges will not be included in the public service contact list, and so there is no correct way to use the e-filing system to provide service.

We have heard reports that some law firms have tried to get around this limitation by creating a private service contact in their firm account with the judge's email address and use that contact to transmit all e-filed documents electronically. This is considered improper, so please don't do it.

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Guidance for E-Service on an Initial Appellate Filing



On September 1, a change to the appellate rules will require that appeals be initiated via e-filing. Here is some guidance on how to handle electronic service when filing an appeal:

When you use the Doxpop system for initiating trial court cases, we limit you to attaching one service contact during that process. However when initiating an appellate case, you may attach any number of service contacts in order to comply with the appellate rules.

The list of the people/organizations you must serve when initiating an appeal has not changed, and can be found in the Appellate Rule 24. What has changed with E-Filing is that you can now serve some of these people or organizations electronically by attaching them to the case when you file the notice of appeal.

When filing a Notice of Appeal, here are some of the people or organizations you may need to serve, and methods of attaching them when it is possible:
  • For represented parties, you will be able to find their counsel using the public service directory and attach them for e-service.
  • You will need to be sure that if required, the parties themselves are notified conventionally, as they will not have public service contacts.
  • The Judge, Clerk and Court Reporter on the original trial court case do not have public service contacts, so these three people will need to be served conventionally. (This also holds true for judges and hearing officers in connection with cases coming from administrative courts.)
  • If the case is criminal, you will always be able to serve the prosecuting attorney via e-service, using the public service contact for the attorney that most recently entered an appearance on behalf of the State. (This may not always be the current prosecuting attorney.)
  • If the case is criminal, you will also be required to serve the Attorney General. To accomplish this, you can attach the public service contact of the currently serving Attorney General. eg: Curtis Hill.
  • For expedited appeals involving children, you have a longer list found in Appellate Rule 14.1. You may find that some of those can be notified via e-service. For instance, county commissioners may have currently retained counsel that will appear on the public service contact list. Some attorneys also serve as a CASA or guardian ad litem, and thus may have public service contacts. However, most of the service in this type of appeal will have to be done conventionally.
When you put together your certificate of service, for anyone whose service contact was attached at the time of filing the notice of appeal, note that they were served via "IEFS" with the date of filing.

On rare occasions, an email problem may prevent e-service from occurring, so remember keep an eye out for any service failure notices, which will arrive via email.

Here's a peek at what this section of the filing screen for a Notice of Appeal looks like:




In addition to learning about how service works, you may want to view our Guidance for assembling your Notice of Appeal for e-filing and information about the rule changes that require e-filing of appeals.




Monday, August 13, 2018

Howard County Converts to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected.

During the weekend of August 11th - August 12th, the Courts in Howard County will convert to the Odyssey case tracking system, this means their Case Management System is now administered by Indiana Trial Court Technology.

This move does not affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system from the Division of State Court Administration. Your access to Howard County court information through Doxpop will not be interrupted during this transition.

A few of the services we provide will look odd during the transition, because there will be a four week period when both the old data and the new data are available. In particular:
  • If you use the personal calendar feature to keep track of hearings connected to your Bar ID, you will see two colors for Howard County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
  • When you look at our "County Details Page", you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
  • When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.
  • If you use any of our "watch" services to keep an eye on cases or people of interest, we will be moving those watches over so they point to the cases and people that are a part of the Odyssey data feed. We run a process to convert these every hour, but it is possible for notification of events to slip through the cracks between conversion runs so you may want to periodically do a manual check between now and September 3rd. After then, we'll be back to normal.
Tax warrants will not be affected at all by this transition.

Finally, one deficiency in the Odyssey system is that financial information is not exported in their data feed, so that detail will not be available after the transition. We regularly ask that TCT add this to the data feed, but so far, we are told that it is not allowed because the clerks using the Odyssey system have requested that TCT not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell TCT differently so we can get the information back online.

As always, we are available to answer any questions in person, so don't hesitate to call support at 866-369-7671 if you have any questions.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Welcome Warrick County to e-filing! Now is the time to get your service contact attached to your cases.

On Friday, August 10th Warrick County joined the list of counties in the e-file system. 

This is just a reminder that if you have open cases in any of these courts now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Lawrence county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.

We have a quick video showing you how it works if you click on this link.
Note: Public service contacts are now available in your service contact tools as well!


For more information about how private and public service contacts may affect you, visit our initial and follow up blog posts linked below:

Monday, August 6, 2018

Guidance for Assembling the Documents Used to Initiate an Appeal via E-Filing.


Beginning September 1, 2018 all appellate cases in Indiana must be initiated via e-filing. Here's part of the information you need to prepare for that:

When you are assembling a Notice of Appeal or Motion for Interlocutory Appeal, there are several documents that should be combined into a single PDF file to initiate the appeal. They are:
  1. The Notice of Appeal or Motion for Interlocutory Appeal.
  2. A copy of the judgment or order being appealed.
  3. If you are a public defender, your proof of appointment.
  4. If this is an interlocutory appeal, a copy of the order accepting jurisdiction.
  5. Any other required documents.
Number 5 sounds a bit open-ended, but the underlying concept here is simply that every document that you would be required to file when initiating the appeal conventionally should be combined into a single PDF file when e-filing. This will then be filed as a single lead document. This differs significantly from the process for trial courts, where each document must be a separate PDF file.

From a practical standpoint, this means that if you don't already have software for editing PDF files, it's time to purchase something so you can assemble documents from multiple sources into a single PDF file. We've been working with attorneys who are assembling PDF files for a couple of years now, and here are the PDF editors we've heard good things about:

Keep an eye out for an upcoming post regarding how to handle electronic service for your notice of appeal.










Friday, August 3, 2018

New feature added to recorded documents: See and select county specific document types.


Allowing our users to be specific about what they search for is an important part of the tools Doxpop offers, so we've now added more specific criteria to the way users can search for recorded documents.

Users may now select the local, or county document type as specified in the recorder's/register's office software as one of your search criteria. Our more general type codes remain available for those who prefer them or are searching across counties.

Also, as part of introducing this new feature, you will notice we have updated and streamlined the layout of the advanced search page.

The details: 

What is a 'County Document Type'?

Each county that we partner with has their own set of document type codes that are defined locally in their office's indexing system. These document type codes are often abbreviated so much that most of us can't guess what they mean. Because of this, we haven't allowed searches on them because some codes only make sense to people who know that county well. But lately, we have been hearing from our users that they have an interest in being able to search on these codes. So as we always do, we listened and challenged our team to add this feature in a way that makes sense.

Okay, so where did the general type codes already used on Doxpop come from?

Doxpop has always taken on the task to review these county document types in each county along with the recorder's/register's office to associate each of them with a simple and more general document type category such as deed, mortgage and so forth. So when you searched for a "Deed" for example we actually return any document with a 'county document type' that has been determined to be related to a deed. This grouping will still be available using the 'Document Type Group' and we have not changed the way this works, we've just added some more transparency when searching in a specific county.

The important part: How does it work?

On the advanced search page for document types, you will now find two document type options:
  1. Document Type Group
  2. County Document Type

When you have All Doxpop Counties selected or a custom search region with multiple counties, you will only be able to select 'Document Type Group'.

But!... If you do select a single county the system will then allow you to search using the 'County Document Type' 
  • If you select the 'Document Type Group' first you will see that we automatically select all the County Document Types that are associated with that category. (as shown in the screenshot above)
  • If you do choose to select one or more specific county document types, you may do so in that drop down using the checkboxes.
  • Plus, if you have selected a 'Document Type Group' and then want to refine what local types from that you may do so. Note that if you change the 'County Document Type' selections after selecting the group, the group will show "all" just indicating that the search will use the County Document Type that you have custom selected. 


If you have any question or just would like general help with your searching techniques we invite you to contact support at support@doxpop.com or call at 1-866-369-7671.

Enhancements made to court case searching and party roles.


In the past, if you ran a name search using the search widget found on the upper right corner of most pages, the welcome tab, or the court cases tab the results returned all cases matching that name, regardless of the role of the person with that name in the case.

That made it hard to sort through the results if the name of a party you are searching for is also the name of an attorney or another officer of the court that may be involved in hundreds or even thousands of cases. In brief, there was too much clutter.

To address that problem, we looked at the types of searches that are most commonly done:
  1. The most common use of the name search is to look for people who are a party to a case, for instance, a Defendant, Plaintiff, Respondent, etc...
  2. The second most common use is to search for all cases for an attorney.
Searches for people in other roles are done occasionally, but make up a tiny part of the searching.

Using that information, we streamlined the simple searching widget that appears at the top right of most pages, the welcome tab, and the court cases tab to search for either a party or an attorney (but not both at the same time). That means you'll start getting less cluttered results for the most common types of name searches.

In the search widgets, you will have the option to search using the role of "Case Party" or "Attorney":
Header Widget

Court Tab

Welcome Tab
When you choose "Case Party" your results will include any person involved in the case with one of these roles:
  • Defendant/Respondent
  • Plaintiff/Petitioner
  • Alias Name
  • Executor
  • Subject
Choosing "Attorney" only returns results where the named person is an attorney of record on the case.

Should you wish to do a search for other case roles, use the advanced search. There, you can select less common roles, or do a broad search for all case roles using the "Party Role" drop-down menu:


In addition to these changes, we've removed the way we group results when you search for particular party types. Through trying to improve that grouping process we realized there is just not a way given the data we have to reasonably group cases together by a particular party without possibly associating two people with the same name that are not the same person.

If you have any question or just would like general help with your searching techniques we invite you to contact support at support@doxpop.com or call at 1-866-369-7671.



Thursday, August 2, 2018

Of interest to Richmond-area attorneys: Whitewater Valley Pro Bono "Race for Justice" is next Saturday

Doxpop is located in Richmond, and we appreciate the efforts of our local Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Commission to provide justice for those in our community who can't afford to hire an attorney.

This Saturday, (August 4th, 2018) the Pro Bono Commission's sixth annual Race for Justice fundraiser will be held at Glen Miller park in Richmond.

You can find details here: http://www.whitewatervalleyprobono.org/raceforjustice.html.

Thanks also to the folks who sponsor this event:

John Maley, Esq.
Barnes and Thornburg
Burton and Simkin




Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Appeals must be initiated via e-filing beginning September 1st


On July 26, an order amending the rules for appellate procedure effective September 1, 2018 was filed.

You can view the order here: https://www.in.gov/judiciary/files/order-rules-2018-0726-appellate.pdf.

The quick summary is that previously, the words "conventionally", and in two places "electronically" were used to specify the method of filing the documents initiating an appeal. Those modifiers have now been removed so this section no longer specifies any exception from the general rules for filing.

Rule 68(C)(1) says "Unless otherwise permitted by these rules, all documents submitted for filing in the Indiana Supreme Court or Court of Appeals by an attorney must be filed electronically using the IEFS." (Bolding added by this blogger.)

Doxpop is prepared for this, and you will find the details of how to initiate an appeal via e-filing in a previous post found here:

Monday, July 30, 2018

Did e-filing downtime on Monday, July 30th cause you to miss a deadline? Here's what to do:


Beginning at roughly 9AM on Monday, July 30th, the State's side of the Indiana e-filing system was experiencing sporadic outages and issues, thus preventing users from e-filing on some cases. At the time of this posting, we have received confirmation of the issues from the Office of Judicial Administration and they have told us they are working with the E-file Manager to resolve. We will update this blog when the issue appears resolved. 

If you are reading this before midnight on 7/30 and have a deadline today, the simplest course is to just go ahead and submit your filing now to avoid the need to file a motion for an extension.

If it is now too late, and this situation caused you to miss a deadline, take a look at Trial Rule 86(N)(1), which essentially provides for a one-day extension when a lengthy e-filing system outage prevents filers from meeting a deadline.

We expect that the Trial Courts will all be aware of the scope and timing of this statewide outage via direct communication from Trial Court Technology. However, if the court you are working with requires a statement from Doxpop to attach as an exhibit to the motion described in TR 86(N)(1)(d), please let us know and we'll be happy to supply documentation in support of your motion. (Simply attaching a screen print of this blog post may be sufficient.)

On the appellate side, take a look at Rule 68(M)(1)(d), which appears to be nearly identical to the Trial Court rule on this topic.

Friday, July 27, 2018

Warrick county e-file update to the update: New go live date is now August 10th!


Doxpop has just received the news that Warrick Couty scheduled go-live date have been moved to August 10th.

If you file in Warrick county and are not prepared for e-file yet give us a call at 866-369-7671.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Warrick county e-file update: New go live date is July 31st!


Doxpop has just received the news that Warrick Couty is scheduled to go live with e-file on Tuesday,  July 31st. 

If you file in Warrick county and are not prepared for e-file yet give us a call at 866-369-7671.

Sunday, July 15, 2018

What happened to the "Cases" link in person/entity details?

Last week, we eliminated the "cases" link in the details for people or entities associated with a case.

In brief, we removed this link because we decided it was confusing at best and misleading at worst.

Here are the details:

When we receive court information for a party's name, it is always associated with at least one case. However, in some situations, the court will know that the same party is associated with another case. In that situation, they will connect multiple cases to the same party. When they do that, the "Cases" link showed all of the associated cases.

But here's the hitch: Sometimes the court doesn't have enough information to know that two people with the same name are really the same people. It would be a serious mistake to associate the "Jane Smith" who has a traffic infraction case with the "Jane Smith" with a murder case. So, if the court is not absolutely sure these are really the same people, they just enter a new record for Jane Smith, so each case has a separate "person" record. If you search for Jane Smith and find 20 records, they may all be for the same person, or they may be for 20 different people who happen to have the same name.

Entering the extra record is how the court indicates "We don't know that these two Jane Smiths are the same people."

The problem is that when we displayed the "Cases" link for a party record, we could only show the cases the court associated with this party record. However, the people clicking on these links might assume that if only one case shows up, there are no others for the name "Jane Smith". That is often incorrect, so we stopped showing the link to avoid confusion.

If you need to check out every case for a person, the best way to do that is to search for the person's name, which will then show all cases associated with a person who has that name. Then look at the case details for every case and check the details carefully so you can make your own informed decision about whether this case is for the person you are researching. 

There may be situations where there just isn't enough information to tell. In that situation, you should be very careful not to draw a conclusion that isn't supported by the information.

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Warrick E-Filing rollout delayed a couple of weeks.


We just learned that the begin date for e-filing in Warrick County has been put off due to a delay in processing "financial paperwork." (Yes... a paperless system delayed by paperwork. We're chuckling too!)

We are unsure of the new date at this time, but folks near the process said to expect at least a two-week delay, so maybe early August. Of course, if we learn of that new date we'll let you know.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

We have an appealing new feature that you aren't allowed to use yet. (But you should learn about it anyway.)



In March, several amendments to the appellate rules were proposed to enable (and require) e-filing of the Notice of Appeal that initiates an appellate case.

Doxpop anticipated an order approving these amendments on July 1, but that hasn't happened yet, so it is now possible to initiate appellate cases via Doxpop, but you probably shouldn't use this feature until you see the order that requires it. We have been told to expect this order on or around August 1 and of course, we will let you know as soon as we see that happen.

In the meantime, let's learn how it works:

Filing a Notice of Appeal is simple and not all that different from filing in the trial courts. The main differences are that you will need to enter information about the lower court case and you have the ability to attach any number of service contacts on your initial filing to comply with the multiple service requirements in rule 24(A)(1).

Here's what you need to know:

A) You will be able to attach multiple service contacts:

The most significant difference you will see when filing an appeals case will be the ability to electronically serve multiple public service contacts on the initial filing. Although not all of the people listed in rule 24(A)(1) will have public service contacts, you should attach those that are available at the time of filing.



This is done using a service contact selection tool very similar to the tool you use when doing subsequent filings for trial courts. You may select service contacts from your private contact list and from the public contact list to be served. You may choose to have those contacts be attached to the case once created or just use them to serve this filing only. We automatically default to having them attached, as this is the most likely scenario.


B) Fees will look different:



Since fees are based on the type of document rather than the case type, the fee amount under case type will always say "$0" but the correct fee will be displayed when you select your filing type.












Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Reminder that Doxpop offices will be closed July 4th in observance on Independence day.


We understand that sometimes you have to deal with an emergency situation during a holiday so here's how to get help over the holiday:

We will not be monitoring phone lines, so you must use email. One of our managers will be checking email periodically throughout the day. If you have a real emergency, please send an email to support@doxpop.com that contains a brief description of the problem and phone number we can call to reach you.

Please be respectful when using this option. It's for real emergencies that can't wait until Thursday morning.




Friday, June 29, 2018

Wayne County Converts to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected.

During the weekend of June 30th - July 1st, the Courts in Wayne County will convert to the Odyssey case tracking system, this means their Case Management System is now administered by Indiana Trial Court Technology.

This move does not affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system from the Division of State Court Administration. Your access to Wayne County court information through Doxpop will not be interrupted during this transition.

A few of the services we provide will look odd during the transition, because there will be a four week period when both the old data and the new data are available. In particular:
  • If you use the personal calendar feature to keep track of hearings connected to your Bar ID, you will see two colors for Wayne County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
  • When you look at our "County Details Page", you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
  • When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.
  • If you use any of our "watch" services to keep an eye on cases or people of interest, we will be moving those watches over so they point to the cases and people that are a part of the Odyssey data feed. We run a process to convert these every hour, but it is possible for notification of events to slip through the cracks between conversion runs so you may want to periodically do a manual check between now and August 1st. After the first, we'll be back to normal.
Tax warrants will not be affected at all by this transition.

Finally, one deficiency in the Odyssey system is that financial information is not exported in their data feed, so that detail will not be available after the transition. We regularly ask that TCT add this to the data feed, but so far, we are told that it is not allowed because the clerks using the Odyssey system have requested that TCT not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell TCT differently so we can get the information back online.

As always, we are available to answer any questions in person, so don't hesitate to call support at 866-369-7671 if you have any questions.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

E-Filing in Montgomery, Daviess and Ripley Counties.

In the last week, Montgomery and Daviess counties have both started accepting e-filings. Ripley County will begin tomorrow. In roughly two months, they will all move to mandatory e-filing (Details below.)

That means Doxpop customers can now start filing in those counties. A reminder:

If you already have a paid Doxpop account at any level, you are entitled to unlimited e-filing through our service at no additional cost. Call us at 866-369-7671 to get started.

Training is also available at no cost. If you can gather 5 or more people, we'll provide on-site training anywhere in the State. If you have fewer than 5 but are within a 90-minute drive, we are easily persuaded (call to give it a try.) Worst case: we'll set up individualized remote training. We know that an investment in excellent training & support will repay both you and us in the long run.

If you want to schedule either initial e-file training or "2018 updates to e-filing" training through your bar association, we can provide a seminar that qualifies for CLE credit.

The mandatory e-filing dates for these three new counties are as follows: Montgomery, August 21; Daviess, August 27; Ripley, August 29;

For those keeping score, only a handful of counties remain that are not e-filing. They are:

Warrick (Starts July 18)

Unscheduled as yet:

  • Clinton
  • Howard
  • Lake
  • Miami
  • Pike 
  • Putnam
  • Sullivan
  • Wayne