New state-of-the-art MiCOURT system improves service and increases efficiency

Representatives from the Michigan Supreme Court's State Court Administrative Office (SCAO) met with Shiawassee County Clerk Lauri Braid this week and talked with her team about the new MiCOURT case management application. MiCOURT, developed by the SCAO's Judicial Information Systems division, is a state-of-the-art case management system that automates many functions previously done by hand. "We are grateful to Lauri Braid and her dedicated team in the Shiawassee County Clerk's Office for showing us MiCOURT in operation," said Jerry Kole, SCAO Regional Administrator. "Our goal is to learn from this visit so that we can help courts statewide implement innovative new technologies to increase efficiency and improve service to the public." The Windows-based application provides each court with details for record keeping, case-flow management, financial management and administrative reporting. This streamlines court operations for efficient and cost-effective services by combining several jurisdictional-based applications into one. Shiawassee is one of the first circuit courts in Michigan to implement MiCOURT and to benefit from the time saved and increased efficiency of the new system. Key features of the application include: - no need to enter codes-replaced by drop-down fields; - automation of judge assignment, case number assignment, previous judge search, and scheduling; - shared receivables, such as joint & several restitution, which can be shared between Circuit and District courts and even juvenile co-defendants; and, - an interactive calendar that is completely customizable. With support from SCAO's technology experts, to date, Shiawassee Circuit Court has electronically transferred to MiCOURT more than 1 million records, involving 41,000 cases and more than 95,000 parties. With six courts statewide having upgraded to MiCOURT, a total of more than 14 million records have been migrated to the new system. SCAO's MiCOURT implementations will continue to ramp up and will ultimately be used in more than 200 courts statewide. Published: Fri, Jun 12, 2015