Exploring North Carolina’s New Trial Court Docket Portal

Accessing state court dockets has long been a hurdle for legal researchers. In North Carolina, Appellate and Supreme Court decisions back to the year 2000 have been available online via the NC Appellate Courts eFiling site. Researchers looking for trial and superior court documents online have been out of luck.

Earlier this year, North Carolina began rolling out its new eCourts system that promises to bridge this gap in digital access. The eCourts system includes eFiling for attorneys litigating in North Carolina, a Guide & File system to help self-represented litigants and attorneys prepare certain court documents online, and a portal that allows the general public to access court information online.

This article will explore the public access portal and how to use it to locate previously unavailable court dockets. It currently covers 49 counties making up about half of North Carolina’s population, including cities like Raleigh, Durham, and Charlotte.

If you’ve used PACER, Bloomberg Law, or similar docket services before, the portal is structured similarly (but don’t expect the same search features or user interface as the premium databases.) We can access dockets by selecting “Smart Search” from the home page of the eCourts Portal.

Search Methods

A Smart Search will return a maximum of 200 results. By default, you can search by docket number or party name in Smart Search. The easiest and fastest way of locating a docket may be via the docket number. By selecting “Advanced Filtering Options,” you can select search filters such as county, attorney name / bar number, case type, case status, and date. Be careful when utilizing filters on a search so as not to exclude relevant results.

The only boolean search term supported is the wildcard (*). Placing a (*) after the first known name yields all indexed name variations in the search results for both people and business names. For example, searching “Jones, Mary*” will include people named Maryanne or Mary Anne. Searching for “Walmart*” will include filings under Walmart Supercenter, Walmart Stores Inc., etc.

Docket Sheets

Once you locate a docket, the docket sheet provides an impressive amount of information, including case and party information, causes of action, lawyers involved in the case, hearings and events, and even details on who was served and when. The “Case Events” section includes the complaint and other substantive filings researchers are typically hoping to find. The case events are ordered reverse chronologically, and you can select the Adobe PDF logo to download a PDF of any available case event.

Limitations

There are some limitations to what is available on the eCourts portal, including county and the date of the case. While NC hasn’t provided official coverage dates, it seems like access for viewing the dockets themselves begins around 2000. However, access to the actual filings only seems to be available for active cases and cases from the past 2-3 years. Classified material like juvenile case records, protective order records, or anything sealed by the court are restricted to the public.

More Information

For even more details on navigating the Portal, check out the training materials provided by NC Courts.

Despite growing pains, the NC eCourts service has the potential to greatly increase our ability to access important court records. Follow the news for more updates and developments related to the eCourts platform.