![\"photo-collage.png](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/photo-collage-1.jpg\" "\\"Keepers")
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Clockwise from top left, Bronx County Clerk Ischia Bravo, Queens County Clerk Audrey Pheffer, Richmond County Clerk Stephen Fiala, New York County Clerk Milton Tingling and Kings County Clerk Nancy Sunshine. <\/p>\n
File photos<\/p>\n
Despite playing an essential role in our judicial system, New York City\u2019s county clerks<\/a> are mostly unfamiliar to New Yorkers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Without them, there are no jury trials or enforcement of supreme court verdicts, and yet they often operate in the shadows of the court system.\n<\/p>\n With this in mind, for over the past year amNewYork Law took a look behind the stacks of parchment and old leatherbound books of court filings to see how these offices are modernizing how millions of New Yorkers interact with the government.<\/p>\n From the tech upgrades updates in Manhattan and Brooklyn to a \u201cno-fine\u201d policy for jury duty absences in the Bronx, the city\u2019s clerks are balancing centuries of legal tradition with new approaches to serving the people of New York City.<\/p>\n Each borough of New York has a county clerk, who serves as clerk of the Supreme Court, Commissioner of Jurors, Clerk of the County and in the case of Staten Island as the County Register.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can go and have a jury find in your favor and render a verdict of $100 million. You\u2019ll never see a dime of it until the county clerk enters the judgment,\u201d Manhattan County Clerk Milton Tingling<\/a> told amNewYork Law about his role as the custodian of Supreme Court records.\u00a0<\/p>\n The city\u2019s other county clerks include Nancy Sunshine in Brooklyn,<\/a> Audrey Pheffer in Queens<\/a>, Ischia Bravo in the Bronx<\/a> and Stephen Fiala in Staten Island<\/a>. While their statutory duties are largely similar, each clerk has brought a distinct philosophy to their respective courthouse.<\/p>\n Among the new practices that this group has undertaken, one policy of Bravo\u2019s, a former community activist who took the job in 2022, stood out for its boldness. She declared not to issue any fines to Bronx-ites who don\u2019t show up for jury duty.<\/p>\n As commissioner of jurors, county clerks manage and oversee jury selection for all courts within their counties, including Supreme Court, Civil Court and Criminal Court, and they lead grand jury selection for criminal cases.<\/p>\n In other counties, residents pay a fine of up to $250 under state law for not responding to jury duty as a way to ensure that there are enough people who show up for the jury pool. Bravo, the first female Latina to serve as the borough\u2019s county clerk, told am New York Law, \u201cI don\u2019t think that we should penalize folks for lack of understanding and lack of civic engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n Bravo decided that she would rely on community outreach to attract jurors. In that decision, Bravo created a test about whether educating Bronx residents on their jury duty obligation would be more effective than a penalty.<\/p>\n Jury responsibilities were top of mind for several county clerks. Tingling, who came from a background as a Supreme Court judge before taking the mantle of county clerk has undertaken some of the most highly publicized jury trials in the country in the past few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had the Trump trial, we had the Weinstein trial, we have the [Daniel] Penny trial,\u201d Tingling told am New York Law.\n<\/p>\n Another cornerstone of the office is the responsibility to record the final dispositions of cases, so that they can become enforceable. So when the New York court system began its transition to e-filing in 2015, Tingling followed its steps in transforming his office to the digital age of e-filing. He, like other county clerks, talked about the ongoing process of digitizing the court\u2019s centuries old historical cases.<\/p>\n