Clerk shortage slowing pace of District Court

Delays seen in civil and criminal cases as paperwork piles up

The First Judicial District Court is seven clerks short, significantly slowing the processing of case filings in one of the state’s busiest courts.

Because of the clerk shortage, the time between a document being filed electronically and an endorsed time-stamped version becoming part of the court’s official record is four to five days, said spokesman Barry Massey of the Administrative Office of the Courts in an email Friday.

That’s about two days longer than the court’s goal of processing new paperwork in 72 hours, Court Executive Officer Kathleen Vigil said.

Massey said the delay isn’t keeping litigants from missing filing deadlines because when the paperwork is eventually processed it’s stamped with the day it was submitted, not the day court

clerks endorsed it.

But the lag between when something is filed and when it becomes official can still cause issues in cases with sensitive timelines.

For example, a petition that an attorney filed electronically Feb. 17 wasn’t endorsed by the clerk’s office until Feb. 21, causing a domino effect of delays that nearly resulted in the case being dismissed because one of the parties still hadn’t been notified by Feb. 25, when a hearing in the case was held.

The attorney told the presiding judge he would have begun the process service earlier but couldn’t without an official endorsement from the clerk’s office. Despite “calling and calling the clerk’s office,” he wasn’t able to get endorsed copies of the document until the

Friday before the Tuesday hearing.

Vigil said she normally has 14 clerks when the court is fully staffed. She attributed the vacancies to a slew of recent retirements and promotions. She said starting pay is about $17 per hour, and clerks often leave for higher paying jobs.

Vigil said another thing that has contributed to processing delays is the court — which instituted electronic filing in civil cases in 2013 — began accepting “e-filings” in criminal cases in December.

Now attorneys can electronically submit civil or criminal filings 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Vigil said. But clerks don’t work around the clock, meaning they are often greeted on Monday morning by stacks of paperwork that have built up over the weekend.

Vigil said Friday her staff was still working on filings that had been submitted Monday.

In the past month, Vigil said, clerks in the First Judicial District have processed 16,380 filings, 12,170 of which were submitted electronically. She said the clerk’s office does keep an eye out for cases that have sensitive deadlines, such as criminal cases involving juveniles who are in custody.

“The court is trying to fill the vacancies,” Massey said in an email, “but any new hires must be trained.”

In the meantime, Vigil said, lawyers and judges are welcome to call the clerk manager to discuss concerns they might have with the time it is taking a case to be processed.