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“We spend a tremendous amount of time chasing paper - if you think about the thousands of cases filed within the system, and all the different sheets of paper that go with that,” Freeman said. Rather than pushing the send button, the attorney prints the document out and takes it to the courthouse for filing – where the paper piles up. That’s how it’s done in the federal courts.īut in Wake County and courts elsewhere across the state, paper is still the coin of the realm. An attorney drafts a complaint or other court document on his computer, saves it there and then files it with the court electronically. To most of us working in a digital world, that’s where it should stay. And that filing, in most cases, originates on a computer. “We’re hurt bad.”Ĭases get started in the court system with a filing in court.
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“We’re in trouble,” said Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens.
Wake county courthouse trial#
That includes judges, the lack of which – especially in the district courts – is pushing hearing and trial dates further back on the calendar.Īnd programs designed with long-term efficiencies in mind, like drug court, are about to go under. Workload numbers say the courts there need 220 people to process the more than 200,000 cases filed there during the 2011-2012 fiscal year. “But we don’t have the backside infrastructure.”Ī decades-old computer system is just one of the several ways budget slashing over the past four years has sent the Wake County courts careening back in time. “The new courthouse is very much next-generation equipped for technology in the courtrooms,” she said. And it’s easy to miss things when you don’t know how they work.”īut Freeman and her team will have to take that outdated technology with them in a few months when they move into the new county-funded, state-of-the-art-courthouse a few blocks away. “They’re difficult to interpret quite frankly, especially if you’ve grown up using Windows. “These systems are very archaic,” said Freeman, who’s been the clerk of court since 2006. It’s also the operating system – or a system just like it designed and built in-house by the Administrative Office of the Courts in the early 80s – that’s still in use at the Wake County Courthouse. Remember DOS? That’s the computer operating system many of us first worked on during the 1980s. Once the calendar appears, click the "Next Week" link until you find a day and time with availability.That’s a “help wanted” job description Wake County Superior Court Clerk Lorrin Freeman might post for staff in her office, if she could hire – an infrequent occurrence these past few years. On the green “Schedule Now” button above and follow the instructions. If you need to meet with a Clerk, please click You may mail your documents, along with the proper filing fee, to: Simply need to file the required documents for your case, no appointment is North Carolina Bar Association offers a Lawyer Referral Service which you can You should contact an attorney licensed to practice in North Carolina. Which option you should choose when you open an Estate. That we are not allowed to help you fill out any forms, and we cannot tell you That we are not allowed to give you legal advice about your case. Simply send a blank email to receive an automated response with more Offer self-help packets for Decedent’s Estates. To see what your options are, go to We also You are dealing with, there will be several options from which you can choose.
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Depending on the situation and the total value of the property
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Thing to do when handling a loved one’s affairs is to decide what kind ofĮstate to open. Due to our high volume of cases, appointments are The appointment scheduling website for the Estates Division of the Wake CountyĬlerk of Superior Court.
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