Court Dockets
This session will demonstrate a variety of resources for accessing and searching electronic records and documents filed in North Dakota District Courts and the federal court system.
North Dakota and Minnesota access and filings use a system called Odyssey.
The official Federal filing system is PACER -- Public Access to Court Electronic Records.
Law Students have access through several subscription services, but the most comprehensive is Dockets, within Bloomberg Law.
Major service providers Westlaw and Lexis have access to a lesser number of court documents.
Federal District court opinions, not all filings, are becoming available on the Free Law Project, through courtlistener.com.
North Dakota Courts Records Inquiry - Locating ND District Court filings
Public Portal landing page - public portal direct link - Public Search Help - login portal
From the homepage, choose the location either by district or individual county district court. From there, click on the map or the dropdown menu to select the appropriate court. The option to choose all ND courts is at the top of the dropdown menu.
After choosing the appropriate court, click to search by type of action, criminal or civil, judgment or calendar.
Once you are in the database you can search by case, party or attorney. Limit your search to open or closed files. Other options for narrowing your search can be by date filed and case type. Clicking on "Use Soundex" will expand your search to similarly spelled names, e.g., locating Smith and Smyth.
The result box has a variety of information.
Within a particular case, you can locate the docket and access other information about the case.
E-Filing in North Dakota State Courts
E-Filing in North Dakota State Courts
E-Filing portal for District Courts
Video tutorials- introduction - others
Access Minnesota District/Trial Court Records at http://www.mncourts.gov/Access-Case-Records.aspx
Minnesota Public Access (MPA) Remote offers access to case information via the internet for certain court records in the Minnesota Court Information System (MNCIS). The information is limited as described in the MN Rules of Public Access to Records of the Judicial Branch. Court documents cannot be viewed in MPA Remote at this time.
Each Minnesota district courthouse offers electronic access to statewide public case records through public access terminals. Each district courthouse also offers in-person counter access to locally-stored, public case records in paper form. Courthouse public access terminals provide the most complete access to electronic district court case records.
How to Search Online MN Case Records
PACER - Public Access to Court Electronic Records
Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information online from federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts, and the PACER Case Locator. PACER is provided by the Federal Judiciary in keeping with its commitment to providing public access to court information via a centralized service. Access fees in ND are $0.10 per page or $3.00 per document with an audio attachment.
Login Page
JChoose the jurisdiction you would like to search.
Scroll to all or specific courts. Here are the links to the North Dakota Federal District Court and the Bankruptcy Court. Clicking on the "i" information icon will display the coverage within the particular database.
ND District Court landing & search pages
ND Bankruptcy Court landing page and search
Interior pages with access to documents and invoice of charges.
Easiest access is using the web address: bloomberglaw.com/dockets -- View the help page.
Bloomberg Law Dockets is the most user-friendly subscription resource available to UND Law students who need access to docket sheets and the underlying filings. Students can search, access and view/download federal filings, and set up alerts.
To access, set up an account and log in. If you do not have an account password, contact david.haberman@email.und.edu.
You will be taken to the main search page where a general or advanced search can be performed.
Searches can be narrowed by court, judge, attorney, and date range.
Searches can be limited by jurisdiction.
Boolean and other search shortcuts are allowed.
Once a case is located, documents can be accessed.
Free online resources are being developed. At the current time, access is only to court opinions, not all filed documents in the docket.
Free Law Project - https://free.law/
From their website:
Free Law Project seeks to provide free access to primary legal materials, develop legal research tools, and support academic research on legal corpora. We work diligently with volunteers to expand our efforts at building an open source, open access, legal research ecosystem. Currently Free Law Project sponsors the development of CourtListener, Juriscraper, and RECAP.
Court Listener - https://www.courtlistener.com/
From their website:
CourtListener is a free legal research website containing millions of legal opinions from federal and state courts. With CourtListener, lawyers, journalists, academics, and the public can research an important case, stay up to date with new opinions as they are filed, or do deep analysis using our raw data.
Docketbird - https://www.docketbird.com/find-federal-court-cases