The Louisiana Division houses the original records of the Orleans Parish civil (1804-1926) and criminal (1830-1931) courts. For information on the court system and on our holdings, link HERE.

PLEASE NOTE: We do not provide long-distance reference service in the criminal court records. Criminal court records can be used in-house only, by appointment. Our by-mail services are limited to civil court records only. We reserve the right to refuse to copy civil court records that are not microfilmed, if the records are too fragile to photocopy.

Ordering a court record by mail is a two-step process:

1. If you locate a court record in one of our online indexes or if you would like us to search for a record in one of the courts that is not indexed online, you must send your request by regular mail to the address above with payment of $3.00 per record. For this initial fee, we will locate the record, count the number of pages, and report back to you on the cost of copying the record in full. Our copy fee is $2.00 per page.

2. Once you have received our report on the cost of copying a record, resubmit your request by regular mail, authorizing us to copy the record and enclosing the copy fee we have quoted.

Please limit orders to 5 court records at a time.

Please send payment in the form of a check or money order payable to New Orleans Public Library. DO NOT SEND CASH.

Please Note:

• If you are ordering records from the Court of Probates (1804-1846) the fee is $3.00 to search each type of probate record you are seeking (i.e., succession, will, or inventory). In other words, if you request a copy of the succession of John Doe, the fee is $3.00. If you are also seeking his will and inventory, you need to send an additional $3.00 for each.

• If the record has been filmed, copies will be made from the microfilm. If the record has not been filmed, we will copy from the original. We reserve the right, however, to refuse to copy very fragile records that would be further damaged by the copying process.

• Not all of the courts are indexed. We cannot take orders for copies of records from unindexed courts.

• Most of the genealogically useful court records in our collection were microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah. Therefore, copies can be obtained from any Mormon Family History Center. If the court record you are seeking is lengthy, we strongly recommend that you order the film from the GSU and make your own copies.

• For mail orders, we cannot copy selectively from court records. We will copy the entire record only.

• Since we must receive payment before we can respond to a request, we cannot take orders by email. However, we will respond by email to your letter inquiring about copy costs, provided you have sent the $3.00 search fee with your inquiry.