The Promise of Digital Transformation: North Carolina’s Committment to Odyssey and eCourts

The decision to implement the Odyssey court system in North Carolina was not presented as a choice.

It was framed as inevitability.

For years, lawyers in North Carolina relied on a patchwork of local systems that operated to some extent in silos.

In some counties, court calendars were posted by paper and taped to courtroom doors or in the hallway of the courthouse.

File folders had to be physically retrieved, requiring touching files repetitively for each filing, for each court setting and calendar call, for each Order, for each judgment, et al, as cases progressed through the system.   

For a state relying on “shucks” envelopes and “flat files,” all organized and stored at Clerk of Courts’ offices, the vision of a unified eCourts system was understandably appealing.

It promised after-hours filing, cross-county visibility, efficiency, consistency, and transparency.

The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), under pressure to modernize a fragmented, paper-heavy infrastructure, signed an approximately 100 million dollar, 10-year contract with Tyler Technologies.

This decision followed a comprehensive review by the North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law and Justice (NCCALJ), which recommended developing an eCourts Strategic Technology Plan and creating an Integrated Case Management System (ICMS).

On paper, the vision was clear.  

It would include a statewide digital platform capable of replacing decades-old databases lawyers refer to as ACIS – Automated Criminal/Infractions System, allowing electronic filings, streamlining case access, and improving coordination between prosecutors, defense attorneys, clerks, and judges.

Tyler Technologies, having already secured several other statewide Odyssey contracts, marketed this as their largest cloud-based deployment to date.

There were a lot of promises and hopes for a bright future.

The actual application and implementation of Odyssey in North Carolina has been problematic at best.

Some might be forgiven for suggesting a more appropriate name for the application is “Ordeal.”

One can only hope that North Carolina’s path to digital transformation is less arduous, and far shorter, than Odysseus’ ten-year voyage home from Troy.

This blog post is an effort to explain how the court system works in North Carolina, address ongoing concerns with the Odyssey ane eCourts rollout, and offer practical suggestions drawn from real courtroom experience.

Want to know about the court system in North Carolina? Contact the Powers Law Firm to schedule a confidential consultation: 704-342-4357 

Implementation Meets Reality: The Rocky Start of Odyssey in North Carolina 

The Odyssey Pilot Launch and Problems

The Odyssey system first launched in Wake, Johnston, Harnett, and Lee Counties on February 13, 2023. The roll out was originally scheduled for October 2022 but delayed multiple times.

Despite years of development and warnings from those familiar with Odyssey’s track record in other states, North Carolina moved forward with the pilot.

Almost immediately, documented problems emerged.

These weren’t minor glitches or temporary delays.

They were structural failures with constitutional consequences. Within the first few months, NCAOC officials logged hundreds of software application defects, including what NCAOC – the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts purportedly described as high priority defects. 

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Users complained about the “wheel of death” that spun interminably when they tried to load cases.

There were reports of glitches resulting in erroneous court summons, inaccurate speeding tickets, and even wrongful arrests.

In Harnett County, clerks were forced to suspend operations due to system instability.

Multiple district courtrooms were closed as staff struggled with system failures that brought case processing to a halt. The problems were so severe that Harnett County temporarily closed some of its district courtrooms for a period following launch.

Odyssey and Mecklenburg County

Originally scheduled for May 8, 2023, Mecklenburg County’s launch was delayed until October 9, 2023, providing six months to address pilot county issues.

Despite this delay and over 1,200 clerks, judges, prosecutors, attorneys, and court personnel completing Odyssey training sessions, problems persisted. 

Within weeks of the Mecklenburg launch, criminal defense attorneys reported lengthy delays and eCourts issues leading to unnecessary jail time.

Within days of eCourts launching in Mecklenburg, defendants were reportedly held in jail longer than they should have been due to problems with eCourts’ online warrant depository, eWarrants, and with Odyssey’s case management features.

Constitutional Implications and Federal Litigation involving Odyssey in North Carolina 

Odyssey Lawsuit and Constitutional Claims

In 2023, a federal class-action lawsuit was filed against Tyler Technologies and sheriffs from some pilot counties, alleging that eCourts has led to constitutional violations that were foreseeable and avoidable.

The lawsuit later included Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden after eCourts launched. 

The amended lawsuit includes plaintiffs who say defects with eCourts caused them to be either wrongly arrested or detained for days or weeks after they had posted bond or satisfied conditions for release.

According to the Charlotte Observer, the legal challenge survived preliminary motions to dismiss, indicating that federal courts found the constitutional claims sufficiently supported to proceed to discovery and trial.

Although the State of North Carolina and the AOC initially avoided liability under sovereign immunity, the core of the complaint appears to remain intact.

At the heart of the suit is the claim that people were jailed illegally because the system either failed to record court orders, misrepresented status, or delayed release processing.

These aren’t data entry issues or the fault of the Clerk of Court’s office, prosecutors, or actions undertaken by judges and the courts. 

Odyssey application issues potentially affect every actor in the system, including defense lawyers, clerks, judges, prosecutors, jail staff, and, importantly, the accused.

Tyler Technologies’ and the Troubling Track Record of Odyssey

The lawsuit against Tyler includes references to a documented history of similar problems in other jurisdictions.

As noted in federal court filings, there have been instances where Tyler rollouts of eCourts-like systems caused problems in multiple states.

Tyler disclosed pending litigation during North Carolina’s bidding process, yet state officials proceeded with the contract. This history made the problems in North Carolina not just foreseeable, but predictable.

Operational Failures That Undermine the Practice of Law

Daily Functionality Problems

You cannot prepare for trial if you can’t see your client’s file. You cannot schedule a motion hearing if the notice never generates. You cannot review conditions of release if the docket lags behind real-time decisions. These are not theoretical problems. 

Defense attorneys across North Carolina have developed workarounds for Odyssey out of necessity, not convenience. 

In a high-volume docket, continued issues with latency breaks the rhythm of case management. It causes delay. It creates confusion. It frustrates judges, disrupts clerks, and leaves lawyers scrambling.

Clerks and judges must wait on one case file before they can move on to the next one due to computer queues that create bottlenecks throughout the courthouse.

No one in the courtroom benefits from a system that slows down access to the most basic information.

Access Disparities: A Structural Due Process Crisis

The Two-Tiered Justice System

Perhaps the most quietly corrosive issue with Odyssey is the access disparity between public and private defense lawyers. In the current configuration, public defenders and prosecutors receive higher-level permissions. These elevated credentials allow them to review full dockets, sort files more efficiently, and generate reports.

Private defense lawyers, by contrast, receive restricted access.

In practice, this means that a solo practitioner handling a felony case may have inferior digital access compared to the district attorney prosecuting it. That disparity is not theoretical. 

Multiple bar leaders have raised this issue. The AOC has offered no meaningful solution.

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Some lawyers rely on relationships with clerks to obtain docket information. Others ask co-counsel or public defenders to check entries for them. These workarounds are patchwork, unreliable, and unacceptable.

Access to the court record should not be conditioned on public vs private entities. 

The Constitutional Costs Problematic Filing Systems

When Digital Failures Become Liberty Violations

In criminal court, legal filings matter.

A bond modification request delayed by a system lag could mean someone stays in jail longer than appropriate. A dismissal not uploaded correctly can result in an unnecessary hearing or, worse, an invalid arrest.

Odyssey was supposed to eliminate paper dependency.

Instead, it introduced new risks while failing to replicate the reliability of physical records.

Clerks, already overburdened, now serve as both technical troubleshooters and frontline fixers of a system they did not design and cannot reprogram.

The stress of that burden has led to burnout, early retirements, and open frustration across courthouse staff.

The Odyssey system frequently fails to send email notifications when attorneys are entered as counsel of record. 

Leadership Context: Decisions Inherited, Not Made

It is important to emphasize that neither the current leadership of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts nor the sitting Chief Justice were responsible for the decision to adopt Tyler Technologies’ Odyssey platform. That contract was signed in 2019, the product of long-term strategic planning efforts that predated their terms.

To their credit, the current leadership has worked to stabilize the rollout and respond to issues as they arise. They inherited an enormously complex project already in motion, under pressure from legislative and institutional mandates to modernize a fractured system.

The problems described here are not a reflection of their intentions or their commitment to improving North Carolina’s judiciary. Rather, they reflect the ongoing challenge of implementing large-scale technological change in a real-world court system with thousands of daily users.

Practical Improvements That Do Not Require Rewriting the Code

It’s time to revisit the “No Wet Signatures” rule

Some of the most potentially meaningful fixes to the current challenges with Odyssey are not technical in nature.

They would not require system overhauls or contract renegotiation.

It would require administrative discretion, modest policy changes, and a willingness to revisit what is actually slowing the process down.

One such issue is the “no wet signature” rule.

Courts across the state are equipped with scanners that were purchased with public funds.

Clerks already use them daily in Superior Court to scan and upload hand-signed materials.

That practice is secure, practical, and familiar.

Yet in Odyssey counties, attorneys and judges are told they may not “wet sign” an Order or Judgment and that scanning signed paper documents “can’t be done.”

Defense attorneys, their clients, and prosecutors in fact “wet sign” Transcripts of Plea in Superior Court in Mecklenburg County.  The Transcript of Plea, Notice of Credit Upon Sentence, and the related notice and stipulation of the Prior Record Level are all signed in court, using pen and paper, and then scanned into Odyssey.

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As such, the limitation on “wet signatures” is not technical. It is a policy decision and an unnecessary one at that.

Judges must electronically sign every order, even for uncontested or ministerial matters.

This additional step may appear minor, but in practice, it slows the process and offers no meaningful benefit.

There is no known issue of forged judicial signatures in North Carolina.

The electronic-only requirement creates delay without improving authenticity, record integrity, or security.

The consequence of these decisions is not theoretical.

In Mecklenburg County, the backlog of expunctions recently exceeded 4,000 cases.

That number has since dropped to approximately 800 due to the hard work and daily diligence of court personnel , but progress has been slow in part because of how long it takes judges to electronically review and sign expunction orders.

Expunctions are cases that used to move more efficiently on paper.

Odyssey has not improved this process. If anything, it has created new administrative burdens for judges, clerks, and lawyers working to clear eligible records.

It also has now caused additional (and unnecessary) work by the Expunctions Unit at AOC, who now automatically and administratively expunge matters that have not been addressed locally within approximately 195 days.

That takes time and thus far, it’s not entirely clear if the expunctions being processed are as comprehensive as the traditional Petition to Expunge and Expunction Orders, through filing with local Clerks of Court and judges.

Put simply, as it relates to the actual day-in-day-out application and performance of Odyssey, the solution is not to reject digital tools, but to allow for practical flexibility.

Scanned documents are already part of court operations.

Reintroducing wet signatures in limited contexts, especially where timeliness matters, would ease strain without undermining modernization.

Odyssey was not meant to replace common sense.

Yet in too many courtrooms throughout North Carolina, that is exactly what has happened.

It’s been an “Odyssey” – What This Moment Requires

The promise of eCourts was not misplaced.

It remains an important step toward improving the accessibility and efficiency of North Carolina’s judicial system.

But even well-intended reforms can cause harm when execution fails.

When a defendant is jailed longer than permitted by law, or a hearing is missed because the docket is incomplete, or defense counsel is unable to access essential filings, the problem is not modernization.

The problem is whether the transition has been implemented in a way that protects rights and supports the legal professionals who rely on it every day.

Odyssey has introduced meaningful improvements.

Who carries the Burden of Proof?

Electronic filing has reduced some in-person burdens. Remote access has the potential to improve coordination.

Uniformity across counties may eventually make the system more predictable.

Such benefits only matter if the underlying structure is reliable.

To reach that point, both technical corrections and policy adjustments to Odyssey are required. That process begins by listening to those who are using the system to serve real clients in real time.

The attorneys who raise these concerns are not resisting progress.

They are deeply committed to the proper function of the courts.

They continue to appear, prepare, advocate, and resolve cases, even as they work through the daily complications that Odyssey has created.

Their criticism reflects not opposition, but investment.

They want the system to succeed because they believe in the justice it is meant to support.

Public confidence in the court system depends on more than innovation.

It depends on whether each participant, judges, clerks, lawyers, and the defendant has the tools to do their part.

That goal is still within reach.

It will take transparency, consistent feedback, and a shared willingness to prioritize fairness over expediency.

This moment calls not for blame, but for clarity, urgency, and deliberate effort.

Curious about how North Carolina’s court system works? Call Powers Law Firm at 704-342-4357 to set up a private consultation.

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