Getting Through Indiana MyCase Without Losing Your Mind
Indiana MyCase is the state's centralized case management and e-filing platform. It replaced a patchwork of county-specific systems and now handles everything from civil dockets to family law filings across the Indiana judiciary. If you're a practitioner who hasn't used it yet, you're probably looking at this and wondering how much time you need to clear off your desk to actually learn it. The short answer is about a week of slow, deliberate practice before it stops fighting you. The system itself is built on a modified version of CaseSoft's CaseWise platform, which Indiana adapted under the banner of the State Court Technology Division. What this means in practice is that the underlying architecture is solid, but the user interface has been customized enough to create its own set of idiosyncrasies. The login portal is mycase.in.gov. From there, you can access the public viewer, attorney portal, and self-service filing depending on your credentials. Here's the thing most guides won't tell you: the public-facing mycase.in.gov viewer and the attorney e-filing portal are technically the same interface but with radically different permissions. I spent three weeks thinking I was doing something wrong when I couldn't find certain documents. Turned out my user account just didn't have the right role assigned. A quick call to the local clerk's office and they flipped a setting. Takes about ten minutes.
How E-Filing Actually Works
Indiana requires e-filing for most civil cases over a certain dollar threshold and in specific courts like Marion and Lake counties. The filing workflow goes like this: you log into the attorney portal, select the case or start a new one, attach your documents as PDFs (max 25MB per file), pay the filing fee through the integrated payment processor, and submit. The system generates a confirmation receipt and the filing is timestamped. The catch is that not every county participates fully. Some smaller counties still accept paper filings alongside electronic ones, which creates a fragmented experience. If you're practicing cross-county, you need to check each individual court's rules on their local website. The statewide system doesn't override local preferences. I learned this the hard way when I tried to e-file a motion in a rural county that still required physical service of process for certain document types. The system accepted it, but the opposing party successfully moved to strike because the local rule wasn't met.
The Document Format Trap
PDF requirements in Indiana MyCase are stricter than you'd expect. Every uploaded document must be text-searchable. Scanned images of paper documents get rejected in many courts unless they come with an OCR layer. The system will flag non-compliant files, but the error messages are vague enough that you might not immediately understand what's wrong. I once spent forty-five minutes troubleshooting a rejection before realizing the PDF I'd generated from Word had been saved as an image-only file. Check your PDF properties before uploading. It saves a lot of frustration. Another detail people miss: the naming convention matters more than the system admits. When you batch-upload multiple documents, MyCase uses the filename to generate the docket entry label. Leave your files named "document1.pdf" and you'll be scrambling through your own filing trying to figure out which one is which. I use a standard format like [CASENUMBER]_[TYPE]_[DATE].pdf and it's made a huge difference in how quickly I can find things later.
Get the Full Details
Public Access Versus Attorney Access
The public can search case information through the same portal without logging in, but the depth of access is limited. You can see case captions, docket entries, and some filings. Sensitive cases involving minors, mental health, or certain family matters are redacted or hidden entirely from the public view. Attorneys with proper authentication get access to the full case file including sealed documents and internal court correspondence. The authentication system itself uses a combination of a username, password, and SMS-based two-factor authentication. Set this up immediately after your first login. I've watched attorneys lose hours trying to recover access because they never completed the two-step verification and then changed phones. The account recovery process involves mailing a physical form to the State Court Director's office, which takes about five to seven business days. Not ideal right before a filing deadline.
Civil Filing Fees and Payment Issues
Fees are collected through the portal using a credit card or ACH debit. The processing fee runs about 2.9 percent plus thirty cents per transaction. For large filings this adds up. I've seen practitioners reroute filings to avoid the peak processing window, though I should note this is more anecdotal than policy—the system accepts payments 24/7 and the only real bottleneck is the card processor itself. A more practical concern: if a payment fails, the filing doesn't go through, but the system sometimes leaves the case in a "pending" state. This can cause confusion when you're trying to determine whether your submission actually landed. Always check your email for the official confirmation receipt, not just the on-screen confirmation. The on-screen message can appear even when the backend payment processor rejected the charge.
What the System Doesn't Handle Well
For all its functionality, Indiana MyCase has genuine limitations. The search function is basic. You can't do Boolean operators or filter by judge assignment within the public portal. Cross-case document retrieval is slow if you're pulling records from multiple counties. And the mobile experience is essentially nonexistent—the interface wasn't designed for phone screens and trying to file something on your phone is an exercise in poor decision-making. There's also no automated conflict-checking against your existing caseload. If you represent multiple parties in related matters, you need to track those relationships yourself. I maintain a simple spreadsheet that logs every case number, party, and judge assignment so I can spot complications before they surface on a docket date. The customer support line is reachable during business hours but wait times typically run twenty to thirty minutes during peak filing periods. There's no chat function and the FAQ section hasn't been updated since the system rolled out statewide. The actual troubleshooting knowledge lives in the heads of veteran attorneys who've figured out the quirks through repetition.
A Practical Workflow That Works
Here's how I approach it now after two years of daily use. I draft all documents in Word, convert to searchable PDF using Adobe Acrobat's built-in export function, name them with my standard convention, and queue them in a folder on my desktop organized by case number. When it's time to file, I open the portal in one browser window, pull up the case, and drag each document through. I pay the fee, save the receipt, and close the window. A typical single-document filing takes about twelve minutes from draft to confirmation. Complex motions with multiple exhibits take closer to twenty-five. The one workaround I genuinely wish the system had: the ability to save drafts within MyCase itself. Right now, if you start a filing and don't submit it, you have to start over from scratch the next time. I've lost work twice because I navigated away from the portal and my unsaved progress vanished. I've started keeping a shadow copy of every draft in my local folder system precisely for this reason. Indiana MyCase isn't elegant, but it's functional and it's here. The counties that haven't fully adopted it yet are the ones where you'll still encounter paper-based friction. If you're starting fresh with the system, invest the first week in understanding the interface rather than trying to file real cases. The learning curve flattens noticeably after that initial period. Everything after that is just routine.
