Marion County’s courts have been in the process of moving from their old location to the brand-new Community Justice Center where Marion County legal and judicial operations will be centered. These include civil courts in Marion County, which are currently in the process of moving. The courts began their moving process back in December and will take some time to get everything moved over, specifically new technology and old records.

This moving process will not be overly complicated, as many court records are already digitized and stored online, but county clerks and other judicial officials are finishing up moving any remaining paper documents onto hard drives and computers. The only things that will remain in the City-County Building will be older records that need to be retained for the statutory time required.

However, once the civil courts fully begin their move, trial dates will be impacted. There is new technology at the new Community Justice Center, and for the technology to be fully implemented by the court system, they will need the requisite time. This time period will most likely occur in February and March and may also impact trial dates in April.

How will trial dates be impacted? Well, trial dates may be pushed back as the Courts move buildings and get new technology set up. Moving records onto servers and hard drives may also take time, as it requires scanning documents boxes at a time.

Originally, this plan was meant to be completed by the end of 2021, but pandemic-related supply chain issues have pushed the move back slightly. Recently, detainees who had been located at a different facility were moved. Civil Courts are scheduled to begin their move this month, and according to a recent news article, scheduled to be finished with the moving process in February of this year.

Overall, this move was necessary to incorporate new technologies to be used by clerks, attorneys, and judges alike during trials and any kind of pre-trial conference or meeting. This will allow the judicial process to move quicker, and for trials to be modernized for the use of judges and attorneys and for the benefit of jurors. As the move progresses there will be further updates from the Indiana Civil Courts System.