MISSOURI COURTS SOON TO LINK ONLINE

Missouri's courts will be going online next year in a way they never have before.

The Missouri Court Automation project, which started in 1994, aims to link all aspects of state courts, from money taken in by the probate division to results of trials by July 1. Lawyers will be able to check their cases online, and everyone involved in courts will save more time, said William Syler, presiding judge for state courts in Bollinger, Cape Girardeau and Perry counties.

No other state has undertaken such comprehensive computer networking among its courts, said Jana Bott, an implementation specialist with the project.

"This will be for civil, criminal, probate, juvenile and everything else," Bott said. "Every division of the court system will use Banner."

Banner is the operating system that the courts' computers will use to handle accounting, scheduling, results and anything else that involves court operations. The program, made by SCT Corp. of Louisville, Ky., was selected because it was adaptable, Bott said.

Software options for courts are limited now, since few computer companies want to take the time to create court-friendly programs, Bott said. Courts have too many nuances and needs, which makes software design difficult.

When the selection process began, the Office of Court Administration invited several software vendors to show their work in various rural and urban courts. Court personnel then took a vote and selected Banner.

"Our interest was in an off-the-shelf system that we could modify to our needs in the future," Bott said.

The state's 45 circuit court districts were allowed to decide for themselves on a training timetable and a date to go online.

The first courts to integrate Banner beginning in 1997 were Jackson and Montgomery counties and the Eastern District Appeals Court.

Cape Girardeau County's district will start training sometime after December, and will be online in the spring, Syler said.

A program called "Case.Net," which is a part of Banner, will give much easier access to court records not only for the public, but attorneys, the judge said. They will be able to find out the status of a case 24 hours a day through the Internet.

Security of court records will not suffer from online access.

"It doesn't change what you can get, but it changes when you can get it," Syler said.

The court system itself is the main beneficiary, Syler said, since record keeping and communications will be easier.

"Now we get any number of calls each day from people in the legal profession about individual cases and steps in them," he said.

Attorneys will have access to judges' schedules, allowing for quicker scheduling decisions.

Fewer steps in recording financial transactions for the courts involving fines, fees and other payments will be duplicated in different offices, said Charles Hudson, circuit clerk for the 32nd judicial district.

Hudson also plans to automate the jury selection process.

The automation process is being paid for by a $7 fee added to each court case over 10 years. This will end in 2004.