Dorothy Brown’s Office Granted More Time to Modernize


Carbon paper, manila folders and stacks and stacks of paper.

In the age of cloud computing the notion that one of Cook County’s most important offices is still using systems that Charles Dickens would recognize would seem to be a problem.

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Nevertheless, it is how most cases are filed today in the office of Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown.

In a scathing Dec. 21 Chicago Tribune editorial titled “Dorothy Brown’s 17 years of broken promises,” the paper lambasts Brown for running a patronage-packed office that is “still stuck in a land that time forgot” and that “has a well-earned reputation as a fortress of inefficiency.”

Illinois’s Supreme Court had imposed a Jan. 1 deadline to end paper filings statewide, but less than two weeks before that deadline Brown won a six-month reprieve. The new deadline is June 30.

Cook County Commissioners plan to file a resolution calling for Brown to testify before the county board on why the office wasn’t able to meet the Jan. 1 deadline.

Brown joins Paris Schutz to explain why it is taking so long to implement e-filing in the clerk’s office.


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