Fresno County Court's New eCourt System Frustrates Attorneys With Slowdowns, Missing Documents

Fresno County Superior Court's shift to a new statewide eCourt case management system last week left attorneys unable to search records, documents missing from the portal, and defendants lined up outside the clerk's office at the main courthouse unsure whether they were about to miss a hearing or catch a bench warrant.

"We haven't been able to do s t with the Fresno County court system," said Shanna Hesketh, a Fresno attorney and owner of Trauma Law California, which handles personal injury and criminal cases. Hesketh said a key search function that allowed partial-name lookups using an asterisk in the old Odyssey system no longer works under eCourt.

The court replaced Odyssey with eCourt as part of a statewide California modernization effort, migrating 5 million cases and 18 million documents in the process. The portal was originally scheduled to open to the public on April 1, but a conversion error pushed that date back. Search by name or case number did not return until April 4, two days behind schedule, and the court still had not fully updated new filings as of this weekend.

Attorney Scott Baly, a former Fresno public defender who now runs a firm with his wife Margarita Martinez-Baly, said the line of confused defendants at the clerk's window illustrated the stakes. "People were just wanting to know, where do I go? Where is my case? Am I going to get a bench warrant if I don't appear where I'm supposed to appear?" he said. Baly described the first week as generating "a lot of anxiety for lawyers and people working in lawyers' offices, particularly in criminal defense."

Court CEO Dawn Annino, responding through a spokesperson, did not minimize the friction. "The court is not surprised to hear that our customers do not care for the new system, yet," Annino said. "Change is hard, but the new system is more streamlined and easier to use than our past system." Annino said the court had briefed justice partners, bar members, and stakeholders for the past year before issuing a formal notice in December, and noted that half of California's trial courts already use eCourt.

If access problems persist into the coming weeks, attorneys may begin seeking filing extensions from individual judges, adding pressure to a court calendar that was already managing a heavy caseload before the system ever went live.