All courthouses in Los Angeles County, (maybe not Avalon), now have public access terminals that allow viewing and printing of family law cases (except Paternity cases cannot be accessed without a password that is only issued to a party or their attorney)
The Good
- You can view and print records from any courthouse in Los Angeles County from whatever courthouse is convenient to you. You can even get certified copies at these courthouses. (Normal charges apply)
- You can avoid the .50 cent per page copying fee by photographing the computer screen (you may need to adjust settings to get the screen to display the entire page)
The Bad
- Paper copies of scanned files are destroyed. If there is an error in scanning, the records could be lost forever.
- You must use the computer to view a scanned family law file. This comes into play in Long Beach and probably some other branch courts, where if you stand in line to get copies of documents of the file and you do not already know which document(s) that you want; you will be sent to the Civil Clerks office to view on their computer.
- In Long Beach at least, the copies of the printed documents are normally retrieved by the busiest civil clerk in the entire office and this is the only clerk authorized to retrieve copies from the printer. There can be a long wait. In addition, once the documents are retrieved, they must be paid for at the Family Law Clerks office, which can involve another long wait.