Surviving the 2012 Los Angeles Court Changes
Posted by Lili Daniel on Thu, Jan 19, 2012 @ 12:40 PM
Last Tuesday, I attended the annual meeting with the Los Angeles County Court Administrators hosted by San Fernando Valley Legal Secretaries association and Conejo Valley Legal Professionals Association. The theme of the meeting was, “The Island: Surviving the 2012 Court Changes”.
The meeting was hosted by Gregory Drapac, court administrator of the Central District and the Central Civil West courts. Guest speakers also consisted of Ana Maria Veiga, court administrator for Central ADR, Diana Gallo, court administrator for Central Family Law, Penny Sterris, court administrator for Northwest district, and Nancy Bullock, court administrator for West District. Each speaker had a lot to say about 2012 court changes. The general message from each court administrator is that there are more filings coming in than filing clerks can handle due to the budget cuts.
All court administrators mentioned these three key points on surviving 2012 court changes:
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Use the Los Angeles Superior Court website as a resource, http://www.lasuperiorcourt.org/. The court website has a multitude of resources including court calendar information, accessing court forms, case summary information, and more!
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They are requesting that pleadings should be no thicker than 3 inches for civil pleadings. Due to the extensive handling with large civil pleadings filed, documents larger than 3 inches thick must be separated into volumes, with each volume requiring a separate cover page. The reason for limiting no more than 3 inches thick per documents is to ensure the court has the ability to review all filed documents in a timely fashion.
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Please be patient. The court is doing their best to keep up with the filing work load with fewer resources. There will be delays, but they hope to file your documents in a timely manner.
With these pointers, do you think you can survive on the island?