BY DONNA SWICEGOOD

North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby called Monday a big day for the Tar Heel State.

Newby joined other state and local officials Monday morning at the Iredell County Hall of Justice for the official rollout of e-Courts, the state’s new electronic filing system. Iredell was among the last of the 100 counties to switch over to the new system.

“This is an exciting, historic day,” Newby told those who gathered in the Superior Courtroom on Monday morning. “This is it,” he said.

“We’re ready to start doing this,” added Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Joe Crosswhite.

An initiative of the N.C. Judicial Branch, e-Courts modernizes the state’s court system, taking it from paper to digital and cloud-based technologies.

Iredell Clerk of Court Jim Mixson said the upgrades will result in the public having 24-hour remote access to court records and other applications.

The N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts worked with the National Center for State Courts to convene stakeholders, develop business requirements, and identify vendors. Tyler Technologies’ Odyssey suite was the solution selected to help migrate court processes from a variety of older legacy applications to one integrated case management system.

“You can access court records from your office or from home in the middle of the night,” Mixson said. “The court system is all public records except for a few, like adoptions and juvenile records, and this is a great opportunity to be open to the public.”

Newby said the implementation of e-Courts represents a huge shift for the judicial system across North Carolina.

“It’s a scary thing to realize all this paper that you write on is now going to be this electronic thing,” he said.

The chief justice said North Carolina is now the leader in electronic filing for the court system.

The upgrades also ensure fairness for all citizens in accessing the judicial system. Someone living outside of Iredell County will no longer have to come travel to the courthouse in Statesville to access court records.

Ryan Boyce, director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, called it a monumental day. He said there will be a day when people will be surprised that court documents were available online.

Getting to this day wasn’t easy nor quick, Boyce said, and it took a lot of hard work and training by court staff across the state to bring e-Courts online.

“It’s like a team getting ready for the Super Bowl. You don’t just show up and run out there and hope for the best,” he said.

Newby said his fatherly advice to everybody is to be patient and be kind during the coming days.

“These deputy clerks are doing absolutely the best they can. This stuff is new,” he said. “It’s going to be different. Judge Crosswhite and courthouse leadership are going to have figure out how they’re going to do things differently.”

Mixson said he and his staff worked for weeks, including some nights and weekends, to get ready. In the past few months, staff members have traveled to other counties that have been using e-Courts to observe it in action.

Newby, along with his wife Macon and Boyce, all expressed their appreciation to the courthouse staff for their work in getting ready for Monday’s launch.

“Y’all are the heroes of this process,” Newby said.

Macon Newby said things like e-Courts don’t just happen. She delivered a message to the members of the Clerk of Courts office sitting in the audience in the courtroom.

“May you all be blessed and your families be blessed,” she said.

LEARN MORE

To access the e-Courts system visit www.nccourts.org.