5 years, $20 million, zero paper

06:16 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 26, 2005

By Doug Miller / 11 News

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Inside the Harris County District Clerk's office, a guy named Reginald Calhoun spends his days filing documents for a law firm.

KHOU

Four stories of the old Harris County jail building are currently stuffed with old court files.

"150 to 200 documents a day, chief. I come back and forth all day," said Calhoun.

All that paperwork adds up by the boxload. So the county official who has to store all these documents is about to let lawyers file by computer.

"If you'd stack all those boxes end to end, it would go from downtown to Katy. That's 27 miles of boxes. And I grow by a mile-and-a-half a year in paper," said Charles Bacarisse, Harris County District Clerk.

Four stories of the old Harris County jail building are currently stuffed with old court files.

"We had to do something different," said Bacarisse.

With more than three million court files stashed in the space where the county used to stash criminals, workers now spend 16 hours a day scanning paper documents into computers.

This five-year, $20-million project is expected to pay off by eventually eliminating about 100 courthouse jobs.

But Reginald Calhoun's not worried. There's always plenty of work here as long as people keep filing lawsuits.

"But I guess that's good job security, you know," he said.