Judiciary Foil Requests

(September 2018 update: The judiciary has made obtaining information easier and apparently now has an email address, foil@nycourts.gov)

Recently I obtained a list of passing participants from the lower court test. A friend and someone I’m very fond of asked how I did that. Below I copy and paste my e-mail to that friend, so that others might benefit and be able to gain access to information they want.

COPIED:

Under New York Laws, most government agencies must provide documents to the public upon request, and redact them as necessary. Goes by different names. Public Officers Law. Judiciary Law. FOIL law. (Freedom of Information)

So our first stop on this journey is here:

The laws governing OCA and Court Records are different. OCA is the administrative agency over the Court, and OCA controls the hiring and lists, so we want an administrative record. We click

Then we write a nice little letter like Hello my name is Christopher Day I am requesting the following records under the Public Officer / Judiciary / FOIL law:

-The list of passing participants from exam 55-183. Such list was made and/or released in September 2017 (example.)
Please inform me of the charges due for printing under the law and payment will be made immediately.
Christopher Day, address, number, e-mail.
It’s really helpful to have as much information about the document(s) you want as possible, because if they cannot locate them, they will not send them.

Now if you want a court record, say a notice of appearance that the clerk won’t let you copy, you do a Court request, which is found here

https://www.nycourts.gov/foil/CourtRecords.shtml

Same basic principle. Hello my name is so and so I am requesting the notice of appearance on docket 2017KN066777, yadda yadda.

In about a month you receive your documents, or a request from the FOIL officer to pay.
If you don’t receive anything after a month, send another request.
If a request is denied, appeal the denial.

2 thoughts on “Judiciary Foil Requests

  1. Pingback: Table of Contents

Leave a Reply