New Search Option in Advanced Court Case Search

We've added an option to search by Case Title to our Advanced Court Case search:

This option should help when searching for guardianship cases. Often the Case Caption includes the name but the person is not listed as a Party on the case.

For example, "In Re. the Guardianship of John Doe" where John isn't listed as a case party. Our case search for John Doe won't return that case. Searching John Doe in the new Case Title Contains field will.

We hope you'll find many more uses for this new tool. Please don't hesitate to call us at 866-369-7671 with any questions. We also like to hear your suggestions, so feel free to offer those as well!

 

Montgomery County Courts move to Odyssey. Access to Court Records through Doxpop unaffected.

Over the weekend of January 27th/28th, the Montgomery County Courts converted to the Odyssey case tracking system, thus moving their data storage and administration to Indianapolis. 

This move does not significantly affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access from the State Court Administration to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system. Our customers' access to court information 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 short 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 each 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" for Montgomery County Courts you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
• When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for active 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 twice each day, 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 the first week of February, after that, we'll be back to normal.

Finally, one deficiency in the Odyssey system from our perspective 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 Court Technology add this to the Odyssey data feed. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell the Indiana Office of Judicial Administration of your needs 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.

Two new features available for e-filers!

This weekend, Doxpop added two new features for e-filers:

1. Courtesy copies for documents, allowing you to send a copy of any document you file to any person with an email. A common use for this would be to send a copy of the document you are filing to your client or any other interested party who is not a service contact.
2. Service contact history allows you to see when each service contact was attached to or detached from a case. This is useful when a question about service arises and you need to know whether a particular person was attached when a document was filed. 

Courtesy Copies:

Courtesy copies may be sent for any document. Specify email addresses for as many people as you wish in the area just below where you specify the party filing the document. By default, these people will receive the file-stamped copy when the document is accepted. If you also want them to receive the un-stamped document immediately when you file it, check the box next to "Also receive a Preliminary Copy."

Service Contact History:

To view the service contact history for a case, click on the button in the service contact area at the upper right corner of the subsequent filing screen:

The history will show you every service contact that was ever attached to the case, and when each was attached or detached:

E-file Reminder: Make sure you control your service contact!

It has now been a few weeks since the State Court Administration made the changes to service contacts we first told you about in December. (Click here to see that post)

Doxpop's support team has fielded many calls on the topic and we have some suggestions as well as additional tips to share with you.

MOST IMPORTANT- Avoid a headache by making sure you are in control of how you get service. 

While we go in depth in our previous blog post about your options, here are a few key points:

Get ahead of the game and attach the service contact you want to use before anyone else decides for you. 

• If you choose to use your public service contact, you'll want to attach that service contact so you have the ability to remove it later if needed.
• If you choose to use your private service contact, you (or someone else in your firm) are the only ones that can attach that so be sure to get it attached to the case before someone else attaches the public service contact. 

For new cases use our 'new case auto attach' to ensure the private contact is attached the moment the case is created. 

When filing an appearance on an existing case make sure you attach your preferred service contact at that time.

For cases that are already opened, you will want to get yourself attached to them now by using our batch service contact feature.
Here is a helpful how-to video!
Also, run this process each time a new county goes live

Need to remove your public service contact from a case and it won't let you?

The only people allowed to remove a public service contact are:

• The user that attached the public contact originally.
• The company that runs the E-Filing manager.

If you need a public service contact removed from a case, email our support team at support@doxpop.com with the case number and the contact to be removed. We will then provide you with instructions and a form that you will need to forward to the e-file manager via email for them to remove that contact.

How do I know the service contact attached on a case is a public service contact?

This is pretty easy: A public service contact will show the attorney's bar ID after the name. 

And lastly-

If you have any questions about service contacts or any other e-filing process we encourage you to first contact Doxpop support via email at support@doxpop.com or call us at 1-866-369-7671. Chances are you're not the first person to ask and if we don't know the answer we'll help find it. 

Please join us in welcoming the Pulaski County Courts to the Doxpop network.

Pulaski County Circuit and Superior Courts recently joined 90 other counties in making their case information available online. (We waited until after the holidays to announce this exciting news so we could have your undivided attention!)

With the addition of Pulaski Courts, you can now access current court case information from every county except Lake on Doxpop. The Pulaski Recorder's office also uses Doxpop for public access, so the services available for Pulaski now include:

• Court E-filing.
• Access to Public Court Case Information.
• Access to Recorded Documents.
• Access to Tax Warrants.

On the court side, the features of interest that this move enables are:

• Integrated criminal e-filing for the Prosecutor, which will bring added efficiency for several offices. Case information can now flow automatically back to the Prosecutor's case management system for e-filed cases.
• Online access to case information for attorneys, which includes the ability to set watches on cases, have their court appointments automatically sent to their office and personal calendar systems, and generally be more quickly aware of events occurring on cases of interest.
• Online access to case information for citizens of Pulaski County at no cost. For those who are interested in following six or fewer cases, Doxpop provides free access at a limited level that includes the same research features available to attorneys.
• Online access for County offices. Being able to quickly look up cases from anywhere is a boon to offices like the Sheriff, Probation, Community Corrections and other local justice agencies.
• Online access for State agencies. The State Police, Department of Corrections,  Department of Child Services and many other agencies use Doxpop to look up information that helps them coordinate with county offices. This reduces the burden on those responding to requests for information from State agencies and makes their interaction more effective. 

All of this was made possible by the recent efforts of several county officials. In particular, we thank Judge Crystal Kocher and First Deputy Clerk Neena Weaver for all of the time they've put into this project during the last few months.

Clerk Christi Hoffa has been working to make this project possible for years. Health problems have kept her from being part of these last few steps, but we want to make sure everyone knows how much we appreciate the effort she put into getting us started. We look forward to her speedy recovery and return!

Information is available for all public Pulaski court cases from January 1996 forward. 

To start looking up information, go to http://www.doxpop.com and click on the "Sign up now!" link or call our offices at 866-369-7671 to learn more.