They Speak
English, Too
By Steven Brownstein
An ongoing problem in
this industry is the persistence
of international vendors,
particularly from the
USA, who insist that court
searches are impossible to
do in different parts of the
world. They offer feeble
evidence based on misinformation
putting doubt
and fear into a customer's
mind. They sometimes
make customers think that
court record keeping is a
USA proprietary secret.
That translates into the customer’s
avoidance in making
the sale because they
have been lead to believe
that it's too complicated,
though not true, or they
will, out of fear, buy a
product they didn't need at
a much higher price than a
routine court search.
The BKI recently received
an email concerning such a
situation regarding court
searches in Dubai. Because
of misinformation given to
a customer in the process of
an international vendor
making the sale, the mislead
customer had the idea
that Dubai was a third
world country and that
there is no way they could
possibly look up a case.
That is as far from the truth
as one can get. In fact Dubai
has a very advanced
court IT process. Their
website offers more services
than most U.S. courts.
If you have the time, look it
over at:
www.dubaicourts.gov.ae .
It is quite an impressive
site.
As far as court record
keeping goes there are only
so many ways a court can
track cases. How the information
is stored is what a
researcher needs to know in
order to find the case. The
most difficult searching
methods are when the
courts manually keep records
by date or case number.
The search process
using that type of system
can be tedious but nevertheless
it is possible. For
example, Chicago, Cook
County, IL, the largest
court system in the USA
was one of them. I know. I
spent many days at the
Criminal Court in Chicago
scrolling through lines of
docket sheets matching
case numbers to names.
A good researcher knows
how the court works. But a
really good researcher
knows the court's filing
system and how to access
it.
Apparently in the above
Dubai case, the vendor
must never have been to the
Dubai court.
If you have a question that
you would like answered
and shared contact me at
answers@search4crime.com.
