New Case Management System for Family and Juvenile Cases
By: OC Supervisor Lisa Bartlett
This week the Orange County Superior Court successfully launched the use of a new case management system to manage family and juvenile cases. It is the latest step in the on-going effort to move to an all-electronic court record that provides better service at reduced cost. All-electronic court records are already in use for traffic, criminal, civil, probate, and mental health cases; as such, the Court has reaped vast rewards in organizational strengths and efficiencies.
The new system eliminates the use of paper files and automates several functions that have been done manually in the past. This allows for greater efficiency and enables multiple parties to view the document at the same time. The system will also allow documents filed by justice partners, such as the District Attorney and the Social Services Agency, and lawyers to be filed electronically.
This implementation was a multi-year effort and came to fruition through a collaboration of multiple disciplines. Orange County now joins other California trial courts, including San Diejo, Monterey, Napa, Santa Clara, Fresno, San Luis Obispo, Kings, Santa Barbara, and Merced counties, that use this updated system.
Information about existing cases was converted from the old system to maintain the continuity of the records. The conversion included over 1.1 million cases, over 4.5 million parties and attorneys, almost 11.7 million documents, almost 32 million case events, and over 4.3 million future hearings.