15 years in the making: Ventura County court to move filings online
If you want to read a filing in a civil lawsuit in Ventura County, you must go to the courthouse in Ventura, to the records office on the second floor, fill out a slip of paper and have a court employee hand you a paper file, which was probably submitted electronically by a lawyer and then printed by the court. The employee will hold on to your driver’s license while you have the file, and if you’d like to take any of it with you, you’ll pay 50 cents a page for the clerk to make copies.
Ventura County Superior Court plans to move into the 21st century by the end of 2023, ditching this system for one that allows files to be kept digitally and viewed online by anyone with an internet connection and a free account. The first phase of the court’s new document management system is scheduled to go live later this month, but it’s mainly for the court’s internal use. The big change for the public will happen later this year, when civil and probate files will be available online.
“The ability to access and view any civil documents anywhere, whether you’re here in Ventura or anywhere around the world — the public access part of it is going to be phenomenal,” said Kevin DeNoce, the court’s presiding judge.
The software system is called “eCourt” and is provided by Journal Technologies, an information technology company with the same corporate parent as the Daily Journal legal newspapers. All new and ongoing civil cases will be moved to the new system and will have documents available online to the public.
The court will scan documents from older, ongoing cases whenever there is a new filing or hearing in the case. It does not plan to scan documents from cases that are already resolved, said Brenda McCormick, Ventura County Superior Court’s executive officer.
The total cost of moving to the new system will be around $4 million, McCormick said. Most of that is staff time for court employees. Journal Technologies also has a contract with the court that will pay it up to $1 million; since the contract started in 2018, the company has been paid about $565,000 for software licensing, maintenance and support.
Small claims cases have already moved to the new system, and documents in those cases are viewable to anyone who registers for a free account. Civil and probate cases will go online next, later this year, and criminal and family court cases will remain available only at the courthouse.
Family court filings often include sensitive information about children, and state law dictates that courts can’t put their criminal records online. Civil, probate and small claims records will still be available on paper at the courthouse, with an appointment.
Los Angeles County Superior Court already uses eCourt, the Journal Technologies court management system, as do other large counties, including Riverside and Alameda, McCormick said.
In the long term, after the new system is in place and court employees are accustomed to it, McCormick said she expects it to lower the court's costs. Employees won't have to spend time retrieving paper files and carting them around the courthouse. The public will benefit even more, she said — "they won't have to take the day off to come here and look at a paper file."
Years in the making
For Ventura County Superior Court, the change is more than 15 years in the making. In 2007, Ventura County was one of five courts in California chosen for a pilot program that was meant to eventually put the civil records of every court in the state online.
The consulting firm Deloitte was hired for the statewide project. Ventura County eventually spent around $7 million on a new case management system from Deloitte, said Robert Sherman, the court's assistant executive officer. But that project never got to the phase that would have put records online for the public. Funding ran low during the 2008 recession and subsequent state budget crunch, and in 2012 the state Judicial Council pulled the plug, after spending a total of $333 million.
The current project with Journal Technologies started in 2018, and would have been done years ago if not for the pandemic, McCormick said.
"After we finished small claims in 2019, we started working on civil, and then COVID came and our whole world changed," she said.
Staffing was tight and the court focused on essential operations. The Journal Technologies project was shelved until 2022.
'Middle of the pack'
McCormick said she thinks Ventura County is around "the middle of the pack" in California when it comes to putting civil records online. Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties both have public web access; San Luis Obispo County does not.
In other states, though, public access has long been the norm. The federal court system has also had all of its civil, criminal and bankruptcy records on the web since 2001, with a system called PACER, or Public Access to Court Electronic Records.
PACER charges users 10 cents per page to view court filings, up to $3 per document, though court opinions are free. But users are only billed if they exceed $30 over a quarter of a year.
McCormick said Ventura County Superior Court has no plans to charge for access to documents.
"Courts only charge if they have some type of cost that's directly connected," she said. "For us, we'll get cost savings if people can access this online, so there is a cost benefit to us in having that available without a charge."
The new system will also bring big changes for the county's legal community. Lawyers can submit filings to the court electronically now, but it isn't the type of true "e-filing" that will be possible with the new system. Instead, McCormick said described it as "basically like email." An attorney submits a filing electronically, and the court staff has to print it out and file it on paper.
"It is a ton of work for our clerks," McCormick said. "It is not uncommon, in civil alone, to get 150 to 200 filings a day through that, and you can imagine our paper costs."
Brian Israel, an associate attorney at Norman Dowler in Ventura and the president of the Ventura County Bar Association, said he thinks the new system make things easier for lawyers and their clients. Lawyers will be able to file instantly over the internet, without waiting for the court to print and file the document, and their clients will be able to keep up on the case from home and read documents themselves, without paying the lawyer a steep hourly fee to answer every question that comes up.
"These are all public documents, so they should be available to the public," Israel said. "It doesn't matter if you're an attorney or a client or anyone else, I see this as being better for everyone."
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: How to access Ventura County court records: Civil filings move online
