Monday marked the start of a new software system that processes all criminal, traffic and all civil court cases from one integrated database at the office of Joseph Carey, clerk of the Circuit Court in La Salle County.

Clericus Magnus software, provided by Jano Justice Systems, will improve the efficiency and speed of processing court cases, Carey said.

The software is designed to dramatically reduce the paper handling in the courthouse. Most documents will be scanned and then programmatically routed to the applicable deputy clerk based on pre-defined rules. Meanwhile, the paper stays in the file room.

Carey said while his office had a third party document management system, "it was not integrated with the case management system and the scanning operator has to manually enter the index of each document. With our new system, this work is not required.

"Not only will our productivity increase, but we will increase community safety and security by having better information at our fingertips."

With the new system and its graphical user interface all of the cases are in one database. That means that on one screen, all cases — traffic, DUI, criminal felony, criminal misdemeanor and all civil cases — for a defendant are presented.

This feature not only benefits the deputy clerks, but all in the La Salle County criminal justice system, according to Carey.

Jano Justice Systems, which has offices in Springfield and Jackson, Miss., is a leading provider of court systems and total integrated solutions in Illinois.

"We are proud to offer the citizens of La Salle County a state of the art solution," said Vasco L. Bridges, Jr., the firm"s president and CEO. "We will reduce a lot of paper handling and keystrokes."