Recorded Document pages over 11" x 17" no longer charged differently

July 1st, 2017 saw many changes in fees for Indiana Recorder's Offices, including an increase in fees for large-format Recorded Document pages, such as Plats. This fee was increased from $2 to $5 per page. Doxpop had previously been collecting $2 per page for our Recorders, and so our fees also increased to reflect this.

The increase prompted a number of calls, and upon asking several of our partner Recorders it seemed that there wasn't a unified approach to the new fee. Both Doxpop and our partners wished for a better, more unified interpretation of that rule, so we contacted the Indiana Recorder's Association to seek guidance.

The Recorder's Association has recommended that recorders collect $1 per page for all copies delivered online. Doxpop has updated our system to reflect this recommendation, and there is no longer an upcharge for large-format Recorded Document pages.

Please keep an eye out for fee updates in the future as Recorders work through how to respond to the changes in law, but for now, we have set the base fee for all documents obtained through Doxpop to $1 per page regardless of size.

Remember that in addition to the Recorder's fee, Doxpop may charge a fee as well. If you are on the 6-search plan (with no subscription fee), the total charge for documents is $2 per page. If you are are on the 20-search or 60-search plans, the total charge is $1.35. On the 200-search and above plans, there is no additional fee, so you just pay the $1 that we pass along to the Recorder.

This change takes effect immediately. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions!

Confirmation section added to e-filing.

In response to a requirement from the State, we have added a set of checkboxes to the e-filing system that users will be required to check off to indicate that they are aware of (and following) the rules before submitting an e-filing.

We understand that this will slightly slow the filing process, and are thinking about ways we might streamline this area. However, for now we simply have to conform to requirements.

The new checkboxes are added to the fees area, and look like this:

Let us know if you run into any problems with this area or have suggestions to make it easier!

Change to rules on serving summons in person or to agent.

This rule change is not directly connected to e-filing, but because the business processes around initial service per rule 4 are generally in flux due to e-filing, this may be a good time to incorporate the change in your procedures.

Here's a link to the court's order: http://in.gov/judiciary/files/order-rules-2017-0731-trial.pdf

In brief, the change is that when you serve a person by leaving a copy at the person's residence, or serve through an agent of the person, you must also follow up by mailing a copy of the summons and complaint to the last known address. (Emphasis added based on Richard Mann's clarifying comment below. Thanks!)

This rule change takes effect at the beginning of 2018, but it's the sort of rule that is easy to comply with now so it's already part of your routine when it becomes required.

h/t to Richard Mann for pointing this out.

Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Race for Justice.

Wayne County Attorneys- We are passing along this note from our friends at the Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Commission. Please consider supporting them at this fun event:

Good afternoon Supporters!

We are having our annual "Race for Justice" on Saturday, August 5, 2017 at Glen Miller Park. Start time is at 8:00am on the east side of the pond. This is a family friendly event with a meandering route through the shaded route of Glen Miller. It can be a 5K walk or a 5k run. Supporting our event lets us continue helping the area's needy with free legal services.

Click here for details and registration information.

Streamlining the E-Filing system.

• If you are a solo practitioner, you may have wondered why we make you choose yourself from a list of only one possible attorney for every filing...

• Or if you only have one payment method available, you may have wondered why we give you a menu with one choice instead of just filling it in for you...

Wouldn't it be easier if in every situation where there's only one option, we just filled in that option for you? We think so, and that's what we've done. Starting right now, when you go through the e-filing screens, in any place where there's only one possible answer, we've just filled that in for you.

This will affect you most if you're a solo practice with one attorney, one service contact and one payment method. However, even larger firms will find that their work is streamlined. For instance, when you are filing a new case, and adding the last required party, the role of that party will be pre-selected for you.

These are minor improvements, but since you use this system for your work every day, we believe you'll appreciate the attention to little details that add up over time.

Did we miss anything? Let us know if you come across any other situation where we can eliminate repetitive work. That's what computers are for!

Welcome to the Boone County Recorder's Office!

We're excited to announce the addition of Nikki Baldwin and her staff at the Boone County Recorder's Office to the Doxpop Family!

Boone County will be our 40th Recorder's Office to join, which we think is pretty spectacular.

The Boone County Recorder's Office has been transitioning to a new, local software package that allows us to add them to the Doxpop Public Access System. Having now completed that technical conversion, they are ready to increase their public access offerings by making these land records available 24/7.

Images and a searchable index is available for all documents filed since January 1996, with additional Deed records back to January 1993. The Recorder's Office is hoping to scan and digitize many more historical documents, so be on the lookout for more data to be added!

Anyone wishing to look up recorded documents on-line may visit http://www.doxpop.com to use the service. A low-volume search plan is available for free, with higher-volume subscriptions available to commercial users for a fee.

New feature: Automatically assign your service contact to a new case.

Doxpop just added a new feature to our system for folks e-filing new cases. You can select a service contact from your firm to be attached to the case as soon as it is accepted by the clerk.

This happens on the first step of the new filing process, where you select the filing attorney:

If you do not want to attach a contact, uncheck the box. If you do want to attach a contact, leave the box checked and choose the filing attorney. A drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose one of the service contacts in your firm:

When the case is accepted and case number is assigned, we will automatically attach this contact to the case for you. 

The first few times that you use this feature, you will have to select a contact, but as time goes on, our system will learn from you, and instead of having to select a contact, the menu will default to your most common choice.

Give us a call (866-369-7671) or email (support@doxpop.com) if you have any questions!

Dearborn and Ohio County Courts move to Odyssey. Access to their court records through Doxpop uninterrupted.

Over the weekend of July 15th/16th, the Dearborn and Ohio 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 Dearborn or Ohio Counties 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 the first week of August, after that, 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 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 Important Notes on Tax Warrants.

Two things have changed about our Tax Warrant system this weekend.

First, and applicable to everyone, we have changed the way basic (wildcard enabled, non-super) searching works. Here are the details:

Tax Warrants are a challenge because on some Warrants, a person's name will be entered using the format "LastName, FirstName" but sometimes, the name will be entered "FirstName LastName" (with no comma and in the other order.)

Previously, we tried to do some of the work for you by identifying the second situation and make your searches in LastName, FirstName format also return the FirstName LastName warrants. The problem is that because there are so many creative company names, we couldn't do a complete job of separating personal names from company names. We decided we were better off not providing an incomplete solution, and instead we are just making sure you are aware that you should check for both versions.

What this means for you

• If you want us to do some of the work for you, the "super search" is the right approach. Enter the complete names or words you are looking for when you use this type of search. It checks for the names/words you enter in any order and checks for nicknames and synonyms. This is probably the best search method for non-professionals.
• If you are a more sophisticated user, and are used to the odd ways the Department of Revenue indexes taxpayer names, you're probably better off using the regular search. This search method allows you to use wildcards and always searches for the terms in exactly the place you specify. There will be no surprises, but you have to do a little more work. This is the search method most title searchers will want to use, and it is the same type of search long-time Doxpop users are used to.

Second, and not affecting every user, we have added some warrants that were previously missing:

The background is that we buy a regular data feed from the State Court, and it is a mirror of everything they put on their "InCite" system for tax warrants. However, after releasing our database that combines InCite data with other sources, we found that the InCite data we were supplied with was incomplete.  At first, we thought it was just a few warrants. After obtaining corrected information from the State and doing careful analysis, we now know it affected 0.1% of the warrants. That's not a huge percentage, but it means that some of our users got incomplete results from our system. 

Here's what we're doing about it

• First, the missing warrants have all been added to our system, so the database is complete now.
• Second, we log every search that happens on our system. We are re-running every search done on our system against a small database populated with the missing warrants to see who got incomplete results. During the coming two weeks, we will be emailing anyone who got an incomplete result to notify you of the details. If you don't hear from us this week or next you will know your searches were unaffected.

As always, please contact us with questions at 866-369-7671 or support@doxpop.com. We love to hear from you!

Allen County Sheriff requires Notice of Acceptance to be included for civil process.

We have just learned that the Allen County Sheriff is requiring that the emailed Notice of Acceptance be attached to papers to be served through Sheriff's Civil Process. This is the email with a subject line that begins "Filing Accepted..."

We previously advised (in this blog post) that you should attach only the "Notice of Electronic Filing" that shows the fees selected during your initial filing to paperwork for Sheriff's offices.

As far as we know, the Allen County Sheriff is the only one currently asking for the Notice of Acceptance. However, because it is simple to provide both and easier to remember a consistent rule, we are now suggesting that you provide both the "Notice of Electronic Filing" and "Filing Accepted" emails to the Sheriff in all counties.