Introducing Simple Search for party names.

Have you ever had trouble locating cases with an unusual party name? 

For example:

• "The unknown heirs of Jimmy Hoffa, assumed deceased"
• "Dr. Charles Smith-Baker-Fielding the Third, Esquire"
• "DBA John Smith"

Doxpop just solved this problem with our Simple Search for parties. You'll find it on our court Advanced Search page. Here's how it makes searching easier:

Names occuring anywhere in the party field are easily found. Just enter a list of names or words, and we'll search for party names that include all of the names or words you've typed in any position.

Nicknames are checked also. Because this search is primarily based on names, we've also enhanced it to include variations on names. For instance, searching for Betty, Liza, or Beth will also return cases involving Elizabeth. (If you don't want to check for nicknames, just put the name in "quotes" to look for an exact match.)

You can search for words too. Looking for an a probate case? You can include words like heirs or estate and if those words appear in the party information, we'll use it to narrow down your search.

Note: Because wildcards don't play well with these nickname groups, we don't allow wildcards in the Simple Search. But don't worry! The current search using wildcards remains available for when that approach makes sense.

Here are a few examples of how this works:

To find The unknown heirs and assignees of Jimmy Hoffa, assumed deceased, you could type James Hoffa, click on the "Simple Search" check box, and hit the search button. Doxpop will then look for cases where both James and Hoffa occur anywhere within the party name field, and as an added bonus, we'll also look for Jim, Jimmy, Jamie and any other common nickname or variant spelling for James. 

If you wanted to narrow the search down because you're looking specifically for the deceased Jimmy Hoffa, you could also include the word deceased. 

The order also doesn't matter, so you could start with a wide search and then keep appending names or words in any order to narrow down results. For instance,  you might search for hoffa and get too many results. Narrowing to hoffa james will reduce the number of results, but if that's still too much, you could go with hoffa james deceased to focus very narrowly. 

To find Dr. Charles Smith-Baker-Fielding the Third, Esquire, you can select Simple Search and use any of the following word combinations in the search box:

• charles baker fielding
• charlie baker the third
• chuck  fielding esquire
• smith baker fielding charles

There are in fact hundreds of different name/word combinations you could use to find this person, but the basic concept is to include all of the words or names you think will be in the party name in any order. The more words/names you add, the more it will narrow the result.

To find DBA john smith, you could just search for john smith with the open-text option checked. It no longer matters if there are extra words in in front of the name you are searching for, or if the clerk has used the First Name Last Name format instead of Last Name, First Name. Of course, there are quite a few john smiths out there, so it's now easy to just tack DBA onto your search to narrow the focus.

That's the quick introduction. You'll find this option in the "Advanced Search" portion of our court system. Please give the Simple Search a try and let us know how you like it by sending feedback to support@doxpop.com.

Are there additional features you'd like to see? Please let us know- your feedback is important to us. 

The Plat Thickens

Today, (8/10/15) Doxpop is releasing a update to our software that turns plats and other oversized documents into PDF files for viewing and download. This new version addresses some scaling issues that users recently reported when viewing larger documents.

From now on, all large document images will be rendered as PDF files in their original size.

The good news is that this means you'll get the highest resolution available, with no more weird margins.

On the more challenging side, it means that when you print one of  these documents, you'll have to either scale the image down to fit the paper in your printer (usually with a "fit to page" checkbox) or it will print "tiles" that you'll then have to tape together for a full-sized image.

You'll need to play with the print settings in your PDF viewer to get this just right, but since you are a Doxpop user, we know you're smart enough to figure it out.

We are also happy to help you with this over the phone, because even smart people have bad days. Call 866-369-7671 during working hours for help.



Note to Firefox users:

While testing this enhancement, we noticed that although the default PDF viewers for Internet Explorer and Chrome work fine with their default settings for large documents,  the default Firefox viewer makes a mess of them.

If you are having problems viewing or printing large documents in Firefox, here's how to solve the problem:

1. Make sure you have the most current version of Adobe Reader installed. You can download it here at no cost: https://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/.
2. Open Firefox. Click the menu button  and then choose Preferences (this may be called Options in older versions).
3. Select Portable Document Format (PDF) in the left side of the list by clicking on it.
4. Click on the drop-down arrow in the Action column for the above entry and select Adobe Reader.

Monroe Document Images Back to Normal

Last week, the Monroe Recorder's office completed the restoration of images on their local indexing system, and over the weekend Doxpop synchronized with their system.

The Monroe Recorder will be working to confirm the integrity of their files over the next few days, and may make small adjustments, but at this point their system is essentially back to normal and Doxpop's mirror is current.

If you were unable to obtain a document copy last week and lost some of your allotted searches due to the problem, please call us with details. We'll make sure you aren't charged for fruitless searches and help you obtain the document now that it has been restored.

Thanks to all for your patience!

Update on Monroe County Recorded Document Images

Over the weekend and the past couple of days, we've been restoring our set of document images for Monroe County and lending a hand to the County Tech Services folks as they do a similar restore on their end.

At this point,  we have got Monroe's document images restored on our system up to Monday, 7/20. The index information was never compromised, and it remains current and accurate.

This means you can use Doxpop to retrieve images for documents filed prior to last week, but for documents filed during the last week, you'll have to go to the recorder's office.

We expect that sometime tomorrow (7/29), the county will complete their restoration process and the following day, we will turn on the process that synchronizes both systems, returning Monroe completely to normal on our system.

So what's going on with the Monroe Recorder's document images?

Folks who use our service for Monroe County recorded documents have probably noticed that document images are currently unavailable from 2013 forward.

That's because last weekend (7/18) Monroe County's image storage drives failed. They are currently working on restoring those images, and we expect them back on Monday (7/27). Our original estimate was that this would happen sometime on Thursday, but it got complicated... Apologies for that incorrect prediction!

In the meantime, the good news is that the index information is unaffected by this outage. So you won't miss any documents when you do a search... You'll just have to wait a few days to get a copy of the images.

If you want more details, give us a call (866-369-7671) or email (support@doxpop.com.)

Gibson and Fountain Counties move to different case tracking system. Doxpop users unaffected.

Over the last weekend, the Courts in Gibson County moved to the Odyssey case tracking system, thus moving their data storage and administration to Indianapolis. About three weeks earlier, Fountain County made a similar move.

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 the transition for either county.

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", 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 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 July 5th. After the 5th, we'll be back to normal.

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 the Court Administration 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 they not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell the State Court Administration 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.

Congratulations to the Public Defenders completing the Juvenile Training Immersion Program!

As the challenged father of a two-year old, the the Juvenile Immersion Training Program (JTIP) sounds like just the course I need to help me deal with bathtime. But it turns out that this program provides the solution to a much more serious problem...

The problem is that an increasing number of people are entering the criminal justice system when they are juveniles. However, "defending a child" is not one of the specialties you'll find at most law schools, much less the even more challenging topic of how the justice system can intervene with positive result during the critical period when a kid can be set on the right path or begin a downward spiral that few recover from.

Not all juvenile offenders are victims, but even the least empathetic among us must recognize that we'll be dealing with these people for the rest of their lives if we don't make a supreme effort to solve the problem when they are young. This is our justice system's single best chance at prevention, and making the best of that opportunity starts with competent representation in court.

To make this issue even more challenging, the vast majority of these kids come from a disadvantaged background, so their families can't afford to hire an attorney. That means Public Defenders are often tasked with the dual challenge of both providing competent indigent representation in a criminal or juvenile delinquency case and working with a client who is often not yet mentally equipped to understand the irrevocable nature of poor decisions.

In 2006, a study of juvenile defendants in Indiana found that roughly 50% of juveniles waived their right to representation in delinquency proceedings. In two counties, this number was as high as 80%. That is a disheartening statistic when you stop to think that these kids have a lifetime ahead of them following the path that this decision places them on.

Fortunately, Hoosiers know how to respond positively to valid criticism. Larry Landis, Director of the Indiana Public Defender Council, and Kaarin Lueck, a former public defender, and now Juvenile Magistrate in Wayne County, acknowledged this problem and acted to provide a better future for kids in Indiana's court system.

Kaarin and Larry worked with the National Juvenile Defender Center to send a group of Indiana Public Defenders to a JTIP "Train the Trainer" program. The result is that 15 Public Defenders from Indiana are now certified to train their peers in the special skills and techniques required to provide excellent counsel to juvenile defendants.

We are proud that attorneys in Indiana are stepping up to solve this problem, and Doxpop was privileged to support this certification program with a donation to defray some of their costs.

The newly certified trainers from Indiana are:

• Jill Acklin from Hamilton County
• Jill Denman from Huntington County
• Greg Fumarolo, from Allen County
• Frank Cardis, From Dearborn County
• Geoff Georgi from Lake County
• Michael Ice from Morgan County
• Jill Johnson from Marion County
• Neesha Patel from Marion County
• Joann Price from Lake County
• Sonny Reicz from Vanderburgh County
• Rachel Romans-Lagunas from Marion County
• Mark St. James from St. Joseph County
• Steve Smith from Madison County

These new trainers join Amy Karozos from the Youth Law Team, Dan Schroeder from the Marion County Public Defender Agency, and Kaarin Lueck, a former public defender, as certified JTIP trainers. Indiana now is second in the country in terms of number of certified JTIP trainers, behind Ohio.

The first training scheduled at which the new trainers will use JTIP is Thursday, June 11, 2015, so this group has already hit the ground running!

Congratulations to the newly certified JTIP trainers, and thanks for your dedication to Indiana's youth!

1999 Cases from Dearborn courts restored.

They're back. That is all.

1999 Data for Dearborn Courts still missing. We're working on it!

We had hoped to restore the court data for 1999 from Dearborn County over the weekend, but found that the source file from the county was corrupted, so we are working with the vendor of the local case management system to figure out the problem. We'll try the restoration again tonight (Monday, May 18th.) No other data sources are affected, and all other years from Dearborn are OK as well.

There's a "hole" in the Dearborn County Court Data. Repairs underway.

An alert user just pointed out to us that cases from Dearborn County in 1999 were not showing up on Doxpop. Upon investigation, we confirmed that all cases from that year (for Dearborn only) are missing.

We have contacted Dearborn County's CMS vendor to get this resolved, and expect to load these cases over the weekend, so the information should be available by Monday, May 18th.

This notice is especially important to customers using our system to do background checks. If you decide that you need to re-run a report after Monday to check for any missed cases, please call Nick directly at 765-373-9245 and I'll make sure you aren't charged for the extra searches.

No other courts or years are affected by this problem

Our apologies for this oversight! We'll get it fixed shortly.