Assigning a single SA/PD attorney to cases vs. the individual attorneys

KB article ID: 1310 (permalink)

Revised: 01/06/2023

April 2020: Action required to ensure that your SAs and PDs don’t lose access to secure cases/documents on Judici

The Remote Access Policy (effective 1/1/2020) doesn’t allow private attorneys to see juvenile cases... even if they are assigned to the case. We have a temporary override which is allowing this for SA and PD attorneys, but we need Clerks to set their official policy on this. So, whether you start assigning all the individual attorneys to cases (see below), or stick with a single attorney for now, we offer a simple solution: Just set the Firm on the attorney record(s) to “SA” or “PD”, so we can tell that they are a full-time SA or PD in your CMS and offer them full access... regardless of whether they are on the case.

A warning about bogus ARNs

Some PC JIMS courts assign all cases to a single (sometimes bogus) attorney registration number (ARN) with a generic name (e.g. “SAO” or “PD office”) and associate it with the email address of the SA or PD secretary or office admin. Some even get Judici accounts using that single ARN, and share it with everyone in the office.

Once you start criminal e-filing, you can’t use a bogus ARN on a case because it will cause all e-filings on the case to have errors. Though there are many good reasons (see below) to assign each individual attorney to their cases, courts using a single bogus ARN could abandon it in favor of a single real ARN (e.g. the SA’s actual ARN). But one way or the other, you will have to remove bogus ARNs from any open cases.

How do you provide access to "staff" CMS users who aren't attorneys?

If you don't mind admin staff having access to all your documents and data, you can create a bogus attorney record for them, and associate it with the "SA" or "PD" firm name. This will grant them all the privileges that those CMS user groups have with respect to Judici.

Benefits of assigning individual attorneys to cases

If you’re not assigning individual SA/PD attorneys to cases, there are benefits to doing so.

In Judici

It lets all the attorneys get their own Judici account, instead of using a single attorney and Judici account, so:

- They don’t get kicked out of Judici when someone else logs in with a shared account.

- They can use My Cases to access the case and documents without having to search for their case every time. Here’s an example for one of the Coles County ASAs: