Update: Legal descriptions for Dearborn County restored.

We received a batch of updates that include all of the missing legal descriptions for documents filed from 5/2 through today in Dearborn County, and Dearborn is back to normal.

We believe this completely resolves the issue, but we are also planning to do a complete reload of all legal descriptions for Dearborn in the next couple of days. The reason we are taking this extra step is that there is a very slight chance that a legal description from an older document needed to be corrected during this period, and we want to make sure we pick that up. The risk of this occurring is tiny, but better safe...

Legal descriptions in Dearborn County Recorded Documents Missing Since May 2.

We just learned that due to a system update at the County, legal descriptions have not been sent for documents filed in Dearborn County since May 2nd.

The resolution of this problem should be fairly quick, but of course we want to make sure you know about the problem immediately in case it affects searches done in the last month.

We'll post an update in this blog as soon as the issue is resolved.

Welcome aboard, Lake County! Doxpop now provides access to court cases for *every* county in Indiana.

Over the last week, Doxpop loaded the historical case data for Lake County into our database. The addition of Lake County completes our quest, started in 2002, to provide public court case information for all Indiana counties.

Case information for Lake County goes back to January 1988.

E-Filing is not currently available in Lake County, but we are told that the current plan is for them to go live with e-filing in late 2018 or early 2019. When that happens, Doxpop will provide e-filing service immediately.

The imperfections:

Like most "complete" systems, there are imperfections that we'll plan to improve on in the coming months. They are:

1. Juvenile cases. Several counties store their juvenile cases on the "quest" CMS. Although most juvenile cases are confidential, JP cases filed since July 2014 are public. Because we don't have an interface to quest, we can't provide access to the JP cases in Johnson, Madison, Marion, Porter, St. Joseph and Tippecanoe counties. Note: Our E-Filing system will still work for all Juvenile cases, so the gap here is just on public access.
2. Probate Cases in St Joseph County. Currently, St. Joseph county uses the Quest CMS for their probate cases. That means that we can't provide public access for those cases, but like the juvenile cases, you can use Doxpop to initiate or e-file into existing probate cases in St Joe.
3. Some municipal courts are missing. Although most municipal courts are on Doxpop, there are a some that either use a CMS we don't interface to or have chosen not to provide access. Those are: 
   • Jamestown Town Court 
   • Thorntown Town Court
   • Whitestown Town Court 
   • Butler City Court 
   • Avon Town Court
   • New Castle City Court
   • DeMotte Town Court
   • Portland City Court
   • Crown Point City Court
   • Whiting City Court
   • East Chicago City Court
   • Hammond City Court
   • Lake Station City Court
   • Hobart City Court
   • Merrillville Town Court 
   • Schererville Town Court 
   • Elwood City Court
   • Mooresville Town Court
   • Martinsville City Court  
   • Winchester City Court
   • Batesville City Court 
   • Fremont Town Court 
   • West Lafayette City Court 
   • Sharpsville Town Court
   • Clinton City Court
   • Wabash City Court
   • Hagerstown Town Court
4. Older unconverted cases in Marion County. When Marion County converted to Odyssey, they did not do a complete conversion. In particular, many disposed civil cases were not converted. In general, this is not a serious problem, but we've found that many JP cases have had to be manually added when a support order is modified. This also creates an issue for title researchers and background check firms. Of corse, this is less of a problem with every passing year. 

See the complete list of Doxpop partner courts at this link.

Additional refinement to our Document Search Results

Shortly after releasing an update to the recorded document search results to make our quick-search links more apparent, we were contacted by users who were able to explain how they had been using this quick-search feature. It was apparent that the new buttons were making their process more difficult in a few ways:

• Links are much better at showing where you are in your process by changing color once you've visited or opened that individual link. A search button was not able to clearly indicate where you've left off or which names and descriptions you've already examined.
• Links also allowed our users to open each search in a new tab, letting you run the additional search without losing your place in your current document results. Buttons are less versatile in that they can only execute your new search in the current tab or window.

With that feedback in mind, we have updated our approach to accommodate these needs. Our apologies to anyone inconvenienced by the prior change, and a big thanks to everyone who contacted us to help identify and resolve this issue!

Specifically, we've replaced the search buttons that were added to the recorded document results with a simple search link:

The newest form of the recorded documents results page.

If you aren't aware of our other great Recorded Document features, please check out our Super Search and Full Text Search options!

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

On Wednesday, June 6th Jay 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:

• Effective 1/1/18 the State Court is doing away with the public service contacts that each attorney sets up and maintains for themselves.
• E-file Reminder: Make sure you control your service contact!
• You can now attach your firm service contact to closed, as well as open, cases in our batch attachment tool!

Recorded Document Users: Does something look different but can't quite put your finger on it?

Users on our recorded documents tab may notice a minor change in our search results.

Please note that we have replaced the magnifying glass image that is used to trigger a search on a specific name or legal description included in document search results. We found many users just didn't realize this feature existed and were missing out on a potentially handy tool! 

Old look

So we've replaced it with something that is more obvious and self-explanatory: a search button!

New Look

Nothing about the functionality or features of the search results has changed, so rest assured that this small improvement shouldn't affect your results. If you aren't aware of our other great Recorded Document features, please check out our Super Search and Full Text Search options!

Doxpop offices will be closed in observance of Memorial Day.

A reminder that the Doxpop offices will be closed on Monday, May 28th in observance of Memorial Day.

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

We will not be monitoring phone lines, so you must use email. One of our managers will be checking email periodically every 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.

New! Your Doxpop Alerts are now displayed on the website!

Welcome to the NEW Doxpop Notifications Tab!

We are very excited to be rolling out the latest Doxpop feature to make your work just a little bit easier. 

By now you should be familiar with Doxpop's search watch and alert features for court cases, recorded documents & tax warrants. 

(If you are not familiar these features now is the time to find out!  These functions are included in every subscription, so give us a call at 866-369-7671 and we will be happy to show you!)

Now we've added to that feature by giving you the ability to review and manage all these alerts within the Doxpop website.

Where to find it? You'll find the notifications tab on the right, next to the help tab.

Notice the count of unread notifications.

Click the notification tab and you should find the interface to be very intuitive, so I'm just going to point a few basic things out:

• You can open and review your notifications, mark ones you feel are important, and archive them once you are done. This functions very much like most email services.  
• Use the filter field to find specific notifications using any of the information that would be contained in the notification, such as a case number or a party name. 

Click on an alert for the same details we provide in the emails:

• You can then navigate between alerts using the previous and next arrows in the upper right.
• Just as with the alert emails, you will have links within the notification details to take you directly to the related search or item. 

We hope you love this new feature and we think it has the potential for future enhancements. If you have any suggestions for this or any other Doxpop feature, please contact our support team by email at support@doxpop.com or give us a call at 866-369-7671.

E-filers- A small change to document descriptions

E-file users:

We made a small change to the way you enter filing and document descriptions to ensure your filings were being handed off to the court with all the information they need.

Here are the details:

The old way to enter the description of what you were filing in the document description field:

The old place to enter a filing description

Now, the required filing description is its own field after you select the filing type.

So when adding a document you will now select lead, then the filing type and then enter the filing description for your filing. i.e. "Motion to Squash". 

This is the information the clerk will see to know what specifically you are filing.  

Then proceed as before with selecting your file and document security. 

The document description field still exists but is no longer required. We will auto-complete it for you using the file name so you never really need to enter anything in there. 

Also, this is not a field the clerk will regularly review so the file name is fine. 

Then you can proceed to file as you always have. 

If you have any questions please feel free to contact support at support@doxpop.com or 866-369-7671

Lake County Court Case Information Begins to Arrive at Doxpop.

During the next few weeks, you may see cases from Lake County appear in your searches.

This is happening because we are receiving active cases from Lake County when they are updated. However, we won't have complete information from Lake County until early June, so please don't depend on the information until we announce the complete load of all history.

Here's the timeline:

• Over the weekend of May 19-20, Lake County converted to the Odyssey case management system and Doxpop started receiving new and updated court case records.
• We expect to receive the complete history of Lake County court cases of the weekend of 6/2-6/3. On 6/10, we will load the information into our database and complete history will be available.
• E-Filing through Doxpop and other systems using the State EFM will not be available until early 2019. (This is a general date prediction- for a project this size, it may be fluid.)

We are very excited to finally be adding the last Indiana County to Doxpop's Court database! Keep an eye on this blog in early June for an announcement that the process is completed.