County steps toward a ‘paperless court’

Bill Gang

Friday, Nov. 27, 1998 | 11:04 a.m.

Come January, information on court cases, court dates and matters handled by the County Clerk's office will be available on the Internet.

The days of having to call the courthouse to check on the status of court cases, passports and marriage licenses will be over. Punch it up on the 'Net, dig out what is needed and move on.

Clerks and judicial staff, who spend vast amounts of time on the telephone answering questions, can't wait.

"It will save a lot of man-hours," District Judge Kathy Hardcastle said. She is on a committee of three district judges who have been spearheading the project in cooperation with the clerk's office.

Hardcastle concedes that, at this point, the limited information available on the computer won't replace the need for a trip to the courthouse for documents, details and copies, but that will change eventually.

The new system, she said, is the first step toward what will eventually be a high-tech paperless court giving lawyers, litigants and those who are just nosy wide-ranging access to court files.

No more standing in line at the clerk's office to file documents while parking meters expire outside. No more waiting five to seven days for copies at a dollar a page. No more sitting at a cramped desk in the clerk's office to browse through files.

The District Court and the clerk's office have been working on the high-tech system for years, and while most of the true innovations -- such as the electronic filing of court documents -- are still years off, a certain amount of useful information will be available right away.

Been sued? Forget a trial date? Need a legal form? Need a list of lawyers? Need something in the middle of the night? It will be there.

The system has been in an experimental stage within the courthouse while hardware that would let it expand to public use was purchased and put into place. Hardcastle said a "read-only" security server will prevent hackers from changing information or even having access to the permanent computer files.

What isn't known is what the demand will be on the new system.

District Court Administrator Charles J. Short said the system is being set up to handle up to 3,000 hits an hour, but he expects it will have to be expanded within a couple of years to handle 10,000 hits each hour.

"We are confident this will be adequate for the short term, but not for the long term or when we go to electronic filing," Short said.

Dubbed "the Web Mistress," the county clerk's computer expert, Janice Boyle will oversee the system, which will be accessible through Clark County's website.

She said she expects the new system will expand quickly to include marriage licenses and basic Justice Court information.

The project has been funded by the County Commission, but Short conceded it will take more funding down the road to accommodate the expansion urged by the committee of Hardcastle and District Judges Nancy Becker and Myron Leavitt.

The clerk's office currently has a reputation among lawyers as being, well, primitive under longtime County Clerk Loretta Bowman, but the march toward modernization should get a boost when County Clerk-elect Shirley Parraguirre takes over in January.

Parraguirre ran for election to replace the retiring Bowman on the promise of updating the office.

With a new Clark County Justice Center set to be completed in a couple of years, there simply won't be room for the cumbersome system currently in place. A visit to the file room at the Clark County Clerk's Office reveals piles of files upon rows of files -- literally tons of paper.

Boyle said the office already is transferring some files into a CD-ROM system using optical scanners. The information is electronically available through what is termed a "jukebox" that holds the images of thousands of files on just a handful of discs.

"To totally automate the office would be great," she said. "The dream of every court is to be a paperless court, with no files in the courtrooms, only computer screens."

But Boyle said that is years away and can only occur if the Nevada Legislature changes the law requiring county clerks to maintain paper files and record everything on microfilm.

Before inactive files are destroyed, they are first scanned onto CD-ROMs. Then the staff goes through the redundant step of microfilming them because of the law, Boyle said.

While Boyle is scrambling to finalize the Internet system, she also is preparing for her new boss. Much of her time, she noted, is being spent electronically removing Bowman's name and inserting Parraguirre's from 148 standard documents the clerk's office uses.