More counties to make transition to eCourts

The eCourts electronic document filing system continues its expansion next month with the addition of the seventh group of counties.

The system will go live Feb. 3 in 13 eastern and southeastern counties: Bladen, Brunswick, Carteret, Columbus, Craven, Duplin, Jones, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pender, Robeson and Sampson, a release from the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts says.

The transition will require what the release calls “significant adjustments” to operations at the counties’ courthouses. These include:

• Credit card processing and four online services — courthouse payments, citation services (payments, requesting reductions, compliances or dismissals), court date notifications, and court collections and payments — were stopped late in the afternoon of Wednesday, Jan. 22.

• From noon Wednesday, Jan. 29, to the night of Saturday, Feb. 1, there will be no communication from the eWarrants to Enterprise Justice (Odyssey), and the Automated Criminal/Infractions System will be deactivated. The eWarrants system will have limited availability.

• From 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 31, to the night of Saturday, Feb. 1, eWarrants will continue to be available statewide with limitations.

• The Enterprise Justice (Odyssey), Portal and eFiling systems will go live in the counties on Monday, Feb. 3.

“Once Enterprise Justice (Odyssey) is released on February 3, 2025, legacy systems will be decommissioned for both inquiry and update [for cases in the 13 counties], the release says. “From that point forward, the public will use Enterprise Justice (Odyssey) Portal instead of legacy systems to access indexes, abstracted case information, and case documents for cases in Track 7 counties. Court documents existing in paper on the date of go-live will still be available in paper form in the clerk’s office.”

It will fall to the clerk of court’s office in each of the 13 counties to announce when the filings received during the transition have been indexed in the Enterprise Justice (Odyssey) system and are available in the Portal system.

Those counties already on eCourts and those that will make the transition after the Feb. 3 group also will be affected during the changeover.