Electronic court records could cut costs, create privacy risks

By KYLE CAMPBELL
Capital News Service
LANSING — To save time and money, a bipartisan group of legislators wants to make more court records digitally accessible. The legislation would reduce the time it takes to access them and therefore reduce court costs, Rep. David Rutledge, D-Ypsilanti, said. The proposals would let digital and electronic records be used as evidence instead of requiring the originals. “This is part of modernizing the court system,” Rutledge said. “It has an opportunity to speed things up in the system and thereby save taxpayer dollars.”
Some states digitize all their court records, while others are in the process of doing so, reducing costs for litigants as well as taxpayers, said Seth Andersen, executive director of the American Judicature Society in Des Moines, Iowa.