Why Courts Choose Laserfiche®
Laserfiche UserNews, March 2008
Any fan of Law and Order knows that courts deal with massive amounts of paperwork, from thick case files to stacks of legal motions, transcripts and reports. Over the past few years, Laserfiche® has helped a growing number of courts digitize all this paper and serve the public more effectively. In this issue, users from two of these court systems share their Laserfiche success stories—and describe their plans for the future.
Tipping the Scales of Justice
Thinking of a traditional courthouse records room might conjure up images of file cabinets overflowing with folders, but that’s not how it works in York County, PA, where staff have used technology to streamline the thousands of cases that pass through the court system each year.
Senior Project Administrator Mary Jane McCluskey.
The York County Clerk of Courts Office uses Laserfiche to manage criminal court records for the York County Court of Common Pleas, whose records are used by 25 other county departments. With over 8,000 cases processed annually and more than $9 million collected in costs, fines and restitution, managing the related documents is a big job.
Before implementing Laserfiche, York County faced what Senior Project Administrator Mary Jane McCluskey calls a "‘sneakernet’ nightmare," with paper copies as the only reliable means of circulating information. Searching for documents that could be located on any one of sixteen clerks’ desks was becoming increasingly costly. Not to mention that older documents resided five miles offsite and communicating with the county prison—also located five miles away—relied on easily-misplaced faxes.
"With the prison, people were often quicker than the process," McCluskey says. "New inmates would be turned away because their paperwork hadn’t arrived and the prison didn’t expect them. Or the family would arrive to pick up a released inmate, and the prison wouldn’t know the case disposition, so they wouldn’t be able to do anything."
After a successful pilot project to digitize minutes from board meetings, York County began digitizing court files in 2005. In 2006, the office began scanning all incoming filings, with the goal of imaging all filings within four hours, or by the next business day for documents received after 3:00 P.M. Staff established a rush process, whereby documents requiring more rapid processing are rushed directly to imaging, docketed and forwarded to a judge, serviced to the sheriff or district attorney, or sent along to defense counsel.
On the recommendation of their Laserfiche reseller, the county also set up a system to simplify scanning and filing. They implemented Quick Fields™ with Pattern Matching and Real Time Lookup™, which pulls the case number from the state database and creates a folder structure. Quick Fields also automatically sorts and files case documents, which minimizes staff training.
County-wide access to the Laserfiche repository means that other departments can view scanned documents as they need them, eliminating the need to copy documents multiple times and significantly reducing file requests—making the court and related departments much more efficient. This reduces the need for overtime and promotes better relations among departments, McCluskey explains, given that staff in other parts of county government can instantly access case files maintained in the clerk’s office. The prison records office also has access to case dispositions and court documents in a searchable format, which eliminates the problem of misplaced documents, as well as the need to physically fax or transport paper records.
In fall 2007, York County implemented a pilot program to give attorneys access to case files over the Web, and hopes to extend the system even further. The county also plans to implement Laserfiche in both the central booking division of the sheriff’s department and in the children and youth services department, where cases are often open for more than 20 years. The benefits have been so great that the clerk’s office would like to receive superior and supreme court appeals electronically, and they’d like to install touch screens in the courtroom so clerks can enter information and send it to Laserfiche even more quickly.
The progress the county courts have made is impressive. "To us, the biggest change is that the judges who were initially hesitant to give up paper are now the system’s biggest advocates," says York County Clerk of Courts Don O’Shell. "We even had one judge tell us the system was ‘better than sliced bread.’"
Click here to read the full story.
topCase Closed
When you ask Imaging Supervisor Marc St. Laurent why the Kern County, CA, Superior Court switched from microfilm to Laserfiche, he doesn’t hesitate in answering. "Microfilm was never a good storage medium," he says. "Court cases can be active for many years, so you frequently need to add probation reports or other information to the case file. We had to re-film entire files when we added a single piece of paper, and it was very difficult to find information."
Imaging Supervisor Marc St. Laurent.
The court chose Laserfiche because it meets the needs of staff in a variety of roles. "We knew we needed to make files more accessible for judges, but the technology had to be extremely user-friendly," St. Laurent says. "Our court clerk needed to respond to records requests more quickly. And our staff needed easy access to case files. We wanted to make case files immediately available, rather than making customers wait 2 or 3 days."
The deployment began with a pilot project in a regional court, chosen for its smaller size and lower case volume. The court freed up space, improved file accessibility and provided better service, proving that Laserfiche could meet the needs of Kern County’s other courts. Best of all, judges were comfortable with the solution—once they realized that files, in St. Laurent’s words, "were not going to disappear into the ether."
After the successful pilot program, the court expanded Laserfiche county-wide. Staff at each court now scan closed case files into the central repository, and a custom integration automatically creates the file structure and retrieves information from the state judicial database. "This customization is just wonderful," St. Laurent says. "All our staff have to do is enter the case number, and Laserfiche automatically pulls pertinent metadata. Not only does this ensure quality control, it also limits manual data entry, which speeds up filing."
Thanks to WebLink™, over 300 users county-wide can access scanned case files using nothing more than their Web browser. "WebLink is great, because there’s no software installation required," St. Laurent says. "Our IT staff find Laserfiche extremely easy to support. We have two staff members managing Laserfiche from the network end, and, because of WebLink, they’re able to handle everything from our Bakersfield location. It’s really a smooth process."
Since deploying Laserfiche county-wide four years ago, court staff have eliminated approximately 40,000 files from their records room. Now, instead of calling the records center and waiting for records to be delivered, court clerks simply open Laserfiche and retrieve the files they need. When another branch requests felony case files from the Bakersfield office, staff scan the files into Laserfiche, rather than mailing a physical copy. With Laserfiche, authorized staff in any location can instantly retrieve these files—eliminating lost files and saving both time and money.
Eventually, court staff hope that more county departments will use Laserfiche to enable more efficient information sharing. The sheriff’s department and other law enforcement agencies already have access to restraining orders stored in Laserfiche. Court staff scan the orders into the Laserfiche repository, providing law enforcement officers and 911 dispatchers with immediate access—something that St. Laurent says has definitely increased public safety.
The public defender’s office is also using Laserfiche, and St. Laurent hopes the probation department will be next in line. "This would be very effective. There’s a lot of document flow between our two organizations, and it would be great to have probation reports immediately available to judges at sentencing hearings," he says.
"Most customers probably don’t notice much from the front end, because Laserfiche helps us deal with cases that are already disposed of," St. Laurent says. "But it has certainly made us more efficient behind the scenes."
Click here to read the full story.
topLaserfiche.com Gets a New Look
We’re currently in the process of redesigning the Laserfiche Website to help you find information even more quickly. You’ll notice a brand-new look and feel right away, but we’re also updating the site architecture to create a better user experience, too. The Website’s front page, for example, now features links to Laserfiche product information, as well as details of upcoming Laserfiche Webinars and workshops. We’ve also updated the index pages for the UserNews and the Global Municipal Exchange to give you a quick overview of several years’ worth of content.
Perhaps the biggest change to the Website is the new search box that appears at the top of every page. The search engine automatically ranks your search results in order of relevance, and links to the most pertinent pages appear in their own box at the top of the list.
We have a number of additional enhancements planned over the next few months, so we invite you to visit the Website often to see the latest updates.
topLaserfiche Luminaries Share Their Success Stories
In her keynote address at this year’s Laserfiche Institute Conference, CEO Nien-Ling Wacker thanked the enthusiastic Laserfiche users who’ve contributed so much to the company’s success over the years. These users—whom she calls Laserfiche Luminaries—have spread the word about Laserfiche in a number of ways. Some have showcased their successful Laserfiche implementations. Others have started Laserfiche user groups. And some have shared educational material about Laserfiche—such as our Document Management Overview guide—with colleagues and friends.
Recently, several Luminaries filmed short video interviews, where they explain how Laserfiche makes their workday easier and helps everyone in their organization work smarter. We’ve posted these videos on the Laserfiche Website, and we invite you and your colleagues to visit our new Luminaries page to view these brief video clips.
While you’re there, we invite you to sign up to be a Luminary, too. The page lists all the ways you can contribute, from participating in a Laserfiche case study to sharing your success story at professional meetings. Luminaries will also play an important role in the Laserfiche blog we’re planning to launch later this year. We’ll provide further details about this blog in future issues of the UserNews.
topNew Support Site Publications
The following publications are newly available on the Support Site. You must have a Support Site account to view these materials. Register your new account here.
| Article Title | Product | Version |
| Importing Images May Create 0 Page Documents in a Newly Installed Laserfiche Server. | Laserfiche Server | 7 |
| Your Citrix Session May Remain Open After Closing the Laserfiche Client. | Laserfiche Client | 7 |
| ISSUE: The Scanner Setup Dialog Box Does Not List Your ISIS Scanner. | ScanConnect | 7 |
| HOW TO: Customizing the Number of Thumbnails Displayed in the Document Viewer Page. | WebLink | 7 |
| ERROR: A "The user login or password is incorrect. [7331]" Error Occurs When Logging In Using Windows Authentication. | Laserfiche Client | 7 |
| ERROR: A "Parameter is incorrect" Error Occurs When Sending Documents to Laserfiche. | Quick Fields | 7 |
Tech Tip: Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts in Laserfiche 8™
Note: In the next several issues, we’ll continue to preview new functionality in Laserfiche 8™. Because this is a preview, note that the details and appearance of certain items may change before the final release.
The Laserfiche 8 Client offers many new features, including the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts. Customizing keyboard shortcuts gives users the freedom to use any combination of keys they want in order to execute commands quickly. Users are not forced to use default key combinations.
For example, the key combination for the Highlight Annotation is CTRL + SHIFT + H. Users can change this to CTRL + H or some other key combination that might be more comfortable for them. By default, some commands have key combinations assigned to them, but these can be reassigned according to your preference.
To customize keyboard shortcuts:
- Navigate to Tools → Options → Toolbars, and select Customize Toolbar.
- Click the Keyboard tab.
- In the Category drop-down list, select the command’s category.
- Under Commands, select the command you want to assign the shortcut to.
- Click inside the Press new shortcut key text box and press the desired keyboard combination. Then click Assign. The keyboard combination will be displayed under Key assignments.
Click to enlarge
You can reset all key assignments to their default by clicking Reset all. To remove a key assignment, click Remove.
If the key assignment is already assigned to another command, you will get a warning that the shortcut has already been assigned. You will then have the option to re-assign it to the new shortcut.
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