Oklahoma Has a Good Court Record System
Video Transcribed: Tulsa Oklahoma court records. That’s the topic today, I’m Tulsa attorney James Wirth, and we’re talking about Tulsa Oklahoma court records, and how to get those.
So we’re lucky in Oklahoma that we have a pretty good system. One of the first states in the country to have a uniform system available publicly online to where people can see court filings. And for that, you go to OSCN.net. That’s O-S-C-N.net So type that into your internet browser, pull that up.
And then at the top, there’s going to be a bar where it’s got a few different options. You’re going to hit on court records. At that point, it’s going to come to a page where if you have your case number, then you just enter the county and the case number, hit that, and it’ll pull up the docket sheet that’ll show all the events that have occurred in that case.
It’ll show upcoming court dates, and depending on the type of case and how new it is, it may also have links to PDFs or image files for the things that have been filed.
If you don’t happen to know your case number, that’s okay. You can search for it. Hit on the search court records button and that’ll open it up. From that point, you would hit the county and the party’s name.
Sometimes if the name comes up, you’ve got Michael Smith that you’re searching for, way too many records may come up. You may need to narrow it down based on the type of case, or the date when you’re expecting the case was filed.
So using those parameters, most of the time we can track down somebody’s case if it is available online. Not all case types are available online. So for a couple of examples, adoptions, are sealed. Those are private. Deprived child cases.
Those are sealed in private guardianships. So you aren’t able to find those records online. So for that, if you’ve got them in Tulsa County, you need to contact the Tulsa County Court Clerk. You can do that by calling, I believe it’s (918) 596-5000. Or you can go down to the courthouse, go up to the second floor where the court clerk is.
And depending on the type of case, they have different counters. So they’ve got a criminal desk, they got a civil desk, got a domestic desk. Go to the appropriate desk, ask them to search for what you’re looking for.
And they may be able to get you those documents that way. Also, if you’re needing a certified copy of a court order or document, pulling it up online’s not going to be good enough for that.
You’re going to need to go down to the court clerk and have them certify that. So, I think that answers most questions regarding how you can find court records. The only additional thing that I would tell you, as far as downloading actual documents in Tulsa County, they started scanning and allowing those for download in November of 2011.
So for like domestic, family law, divorce cases, most of those documents from November of 2011 forward are available on OSCN.net, where you can pull those up. For some case types, those maybe not available online, for criminal cases involving children, for protective orders. Those are no longer available online as far as the actual court documents.
You can get the court record so you can see what’s been filed. But as far as the actual documents have been filed, you need to go down to the courthouse to get those. They’re public records, but they’re not available readily online.
If you’ve got any questions about locating anything, have any problems finding it, you can talk to someone in my office about that. We may be able to help you out. For that, you can go to makelaweasy.com.
