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Hoosier attorneys will soon be introduced to an updated electronic filing system to organize trial and appellate court documents and information in both civil and criminal cases.
INfile, the new approach, is specific to Indiana and intended to meet the needs of attorneys and judges across the state’s 92 counties.
“It’s bringing everybody into one system…and we can respond to people’s requests, respond to things that we think are a good idea, things that attorneys think are a good idea, easier,” said Janelle O’Malley, Director of E-filing and Innovation for the Indiana Office of Court Technology.
The office, which reports to the Indiana Supreme Court, has been charged with establishing and developing the system for state use.
After a decade of e-filing in Indiana, it’s time to take the next step, she wrote for the Indiana Court Times in August. Through INfile, the state’s courts will have direct control over the technology that shapes their everyday professional lives.
Why it’s needed
The state has been using e-filing since 2015, when Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush announced in her very first State of the Judiciary address that Indiana would be adopting a statewide system to allow attorneys and judges to file and access court information in a timely manner.
“Many examples of court programs discussed this afternoon depend on the ability to enter, store, retrieve, and share information in a timely and cost-effective way,” Chief Justice Rush said in the address. “Imagine the hours and costs required to shepherd tens of millions of pages of paper as they are filed and refiled, delivered and mailed, stored and shuffled, copied and recopied, and on and on throughout Indiana courts and agencies each year!”
By 2019, the system was available in all Indiana counties.
At the time, the technology was built by Texas-based software company Tyler Technologies. As with any state, however, Indiana’s attorneys must adhere to state-specific statutes and court rules when filing.
As the needs of Indiana’s legal professionals have evolved, and tech professionals’ understanding of those needs have progressed, the Office of Court Technology determined that it was time to move forward with building an in-house system that caters to Hoosier filers, courts and clerks.
INfile users won’t find the technology too different from what they’re used to, O’Malley said, but the system will streamline common processes attorneys perform when filing documents.
Under Indiana’s current e-filing system, there are three avenues of e-filing: regular routes, e-filing for protective orders and e-filing for criminal cases. With INfile, those three filing processes will be integrated into one system, making the process easier and faster for staff on both ends.
The system will also offer both experienced attorneys and pro se litigants’ appropriate guidance for filing.
“One thing that building our own system enables us to do is give attorneys the path where they are kind of experts and they know what to do, and then give pro se litigants a path where there’s more explanation, more information,” O’Malley said.
While the office originally expected to roll out the new system in December, the anticipated release is planned for spring 2026. In the meantime, O’Malley recommends that attorneys prepare for the change by frequently checking the website the office has created to post updates on the system.
Pursuing progress
Indiana’s judicial system is seen as particularly progressive in its decision to adopt technology that serves both legal professionals and the public.
In 2007, an $11 million contract was signed with Tyler Technologies to implement the Odyssey Case Management System, Indiana’s fully integrated case and financial management system, according to previous reporting by The Indiana Lawyer.
Widely known as “MyCase,” the case management system serves not only legal professionals but offers the public access to view criminal and civil cases for free. That public access will continue.
Monroe County was the first to implement MyCase, with eight county circuit courts adopting the system by the end of the system’s first year in use. Randolph County was the last to adopt the system in 2021.
One of MyCase’s biggest advocates, Indiana Court of Appeals Judge Paul Mathias, played a major role in the efforts to develop MyCase in the early 2000s.
“Sometimes, it’s hard to remember the years before Odyssey,” Judge Mathias said in an email. “But until Odyssey, there were 23 case management systems that did not communicate with each other and that were not available to the public…Free 24/7 Odyssey and e-filing have revolutionized citizens’ access to the judicial system and have made transparency a reality.”
The importance of MyCase to public transparency shows in numbers alone. In its 2024-2025 annual report, the Indiana Supreme Court reported that MyCase received 81 million page views during the previous fiscal year. Twenty-nine million documents were downloaded from MyCase the same year.
And when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Indiana’s courts had technology in place to maneuver the shift.
“COVID crystallized the need for and benefits of robust centralized case management and e-filing systems, not only for attorneys and judges, but for represented and unrepresented litigants, as well,” Mathias said.
O’Malley chalks much of the state’s progress up to the state’s supreme court and its pursuit of progress. In her time with the court, she’s seen courts switch from paper to sophisticated technology and credits that evolution to attorneys who offer feedback on their needs and leaders who listen and support them.
“The court is supportive of technology and really puts an emphasis on it and so, that allows us to build these first-class systems,” she said.•
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