World of Dockets

Obviously many of us do not have an abundance of free time on our hands. Most of us have to work for a living and during the few moments we actually do have some free time, we want to relax. Nothing can eat up our moments of leisure like having to go to court, whether it is because of a traffic incident, civil dispute, or criminal activity. Checking a court docket for your local court can be a very good way to save yourself that valuable free time that we all covet. Dockets are available for the public so that they can see what hearings have been scheduled in a court and when. If you ever get a chance to choose the day you visit court, make sure to check a court docket to see when both the court and yourself are available. Checking dockets will give you assurance that nobody is pulling a fast one over on you and misrepresenting their times of availability. Here are some Do’s and Dont’s for browsing through a court docket. You may never have thought about it, but dockets can be a useful tool.

DO check a court docket to make sure you have the correct date for your hearing. Nothing looks worse than showing up late or not showing up at all. You do not want to get on a judge’s bad side, ever. The dockets are there so that these misunderstandings do not occur. If the court date you received and the date for your hearing in the court docket do not match, contact the court to see what is happening. These dockets will minimize any possible confusion, which is a good thing for you and the court itself.

DO look through a court docket if you have never seen our legal system in process. It can be a memorable experience and will expose you to something new. Go through the dockets and find a case or hearing that looks interesting to you. Once you find something on the court docket, and you find out if the hearing is open to the public, go ahead and go there to check it out. Even if there is no hearing on the dockets that are open to the public, it might be fun to go down to your local courthouse to have a look around.

DO NOT use a court docket to look for people you know. Having to go to court can be embarrassing and frustrating for many of us. Nobody needs someone using the public dockets to come and harass them during a difficult time. If you do this, not only will you probably be making an enemy for life, you may be getting into some trouble yourself. A court docket is for public use and many people can use them to see a case they have some interest in, but the dockets are not there for stalking purposes.

Go online and look at a court docket. Dockets are there for you to view.