The Challenge: Meeting Heightened Expectations Amid Resource Constraints

Over a decade ago, the Court was facing growing citizen demands for record accessibility and efficiency as well as staff demands for space optimization, exacerbating the need to modernize how it managed litigation files. At the time, most records were in paper form across multiple locations, occupying costly warehouse space and requiring physical – and time-consuming – retrieval. This was particularly problematic as in-house resources continued to dwindle.

By 2024, a great deal of progress had been made in improving record retrieval times and, therefore, efficiency. MetaSource was digitizing over a million case file pages per month and had scanned tens of thousands of microfilm/fiche rolls.

Still, five warehouse facilities containing large volumes of legacy paper records remained, hindering the Court’s ability to make the most of its case management system (CMS). It was clear that the Court’s existing records management infrastructure, while serviceable, was a barrier to the efficient administration of justice that was expected.

Pressure was building up from multiple angles:

• Resources were being consumed by manual box retrievals, interfacility transfers, and intake processing, resulting in docketing delays and extended turnaround times for mandated public record fulfillment.
• Between labor costs associated with manual file management and real estate expenses for warehouse facilities, costs were quickly adding up.
• The Court’s environmental impact was higher than desired due to the level of warehouse storage and transportation required to obtain judicial files.