Handwritten documents, Manila folders, carbon paper — welcome to Cook County criminal court
CHICAGO - Every workday, attorneys enter criminal courtrooms across Cook County, put away their smartphones and operate in a world that their grandparents would have recognized: accordion-style Manila folders to hold paper documents, handwritten orders for judges to sign, even carbon paper to make copies of the paper filings.
"God help us all if the carbon didn't take," said defense attorney Alana De Leon, who had never used the outdated copying method - invented more than two centuries ago - before setting foot in a West Side branch court a few years
