ABA Responds to the Aftermath of Katrina

From our friend Larry Smith at the American Bar Association:

The American Bar Association is coordinating with FEMA to provide resources, and will serve as a clearinghouse for lawyers and those in the legal profession who are willing to volunteer, either generally or specifically for law firm clients and for the firms themselves. This week, we (the ABA Law Practice Management Section and others) are also gathering resources that we have previously published on practice interruption/continuation and disaster recovery for the benefit of those practices that cannot continue. These resources will be published both at the LPM and ABA-wide pages, linked through the ABA Web site at www.abanet.org. We continue to field inquiries on these topics. If any of you have materials that you believe are appropriate for this effort, we encourage you to share them.

Thanks,
Larry C. Smith, Director
Law Practice Management Section
American Bar Association
E-mail: SmithL@staff.abanet.org
Phone: 312-988-5661
Web: www.lawpractice.org

Wireless in the Courtroom

Submitted by Hon. Kenneth L. Fields, Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County

In mid 2004 the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County (Phoenix), decided to experiment with wireless service for the parties and counsel in four of its electronic courtrooms. The Court, working with County administration, installed the necessary equipment, developed the necessary protocols and initiated the service in early 2005.

At the present time it is offered as a free service for any attorney, party, witness or spectator on the 4th floor of the East Court Building. The comments from counsel are positive. The ability to have wireless support has lead to many new ideas for litigation support in the Courtroom. Examples are to have your expert available via instant messaging to support your cross examination while the opposing party is presenting its case or having the ability to locate missing documents at the last minute and forwarding them to you while the trial is on-going. Another recent use was to have a witness testifying telephonically coast to coast while the paralegals were sending him copies of exhibits as an e-mail attachment to be viewed during the examination. The costs saving were significant when one considered the alternative of video broadcasting or conferencing the testimony.

The use of wireless is just starting to catch on with the more adept attorneys and is expected to be a routine request in larger trials. For more information, contact Eric Ciminski at ciminskie@superiorcourt.maricopa.gov.

CTC9 Justice Integration Net

New at CTC9, the Justice Integration Net, sponsored by Microsoft Corporation and powered by SAIC, will demonstrate how a jurisdiction can quickly realize the benefits of an integrated justice system. As many court technology experts know, criminal justice integration has been a difficult and expensive enterprise. In addition, issues such as security, authentication and trust have been significant barriers. The Justice Integration Net demonstration will incorporate all of the technologies and components you expect - XML, middleware, digital signatures, speech recognition, and more - and present a framework for evolving standards and solutions, all in a compact demonstration venue adjacent to the NCSC Pavilion in booth number 435. The CTC9 Justice Integration Net will also demonstrate what is possible in integration today using off-the-shelf software and hardware. Presentations will be made on the half-hour for most of the first day and on the hour on the second day of the exhibition.

NCSC Jur-E Bulletin Warning on Identity Theft

The August 5, 2005 edition of the NCSC's Center for Jury Studies Jur-E Bulletin contained the announcement on the latest identity theft scam.

Identity Theft Alert: Courts Beware

It seems that the latest target for those in the identity theft business is the jury system, as Jur-E was made aware of two separate cases this week in which jury programs were being used as a vehicle for obtaining individuals' personal information.

First, in Maricopa County, Arizona, citizens have been the targets of phone calls from individuals claiming to be court officials. These occurrences have drastically increased over the past month. Often, the individual claiming to be an agent of the court indicated that the phone call was in regards to jury service, issuing harsh threats regarding failure to appear and requesting personal information for "verification purposes."

Maricopa County was made aware of the problem when citizens called the court directly to question the validity of the calls, and to complain about the treatment they had received from the individuals posing as court staff. The court reacted swiftly, issuing a statement to the press emphasizing that the court would never request personal information over the phone, and also providing warning signs to prevent identity theft and fraud over the phone. In the press release, the court emphasized that they did not contact individuals over the phone regarding jury duty at any time.

A similar scam was reported in Thurston County, Washington. Again, a resident called the court to report that a man, claiming to be a court official, had called her at home regarding her "failure to appear at jury service." The caller pressed the woman for her Social Security number, name, and date of birth. The court emphasized in their statement to the press that they would never request such information over the phone.

Both of these cases should serve as notification to courts around the country that this type of fraud may be on the rise. Jur-E has heard of other similar cases over the course of the past year, but it seems as though they are increasing in frequency. In both cases in question, courts responded quickly to the claims and made public their policies regarding jury duty and non-response follow-up. This case further emphasizes the importance of jury managers maintaining communication with the general public. See our NCSC KIS department's page on trends in identity theft for more information.

Chris Caposella to be CTC9 Keynoter

One of the presentations that I am most looking forward to at CTC9 is Wednesday morning's keynote address by Chris Capossela of Microsoft. He is currently the Corporate Vice President, Information Worker Product Management Group, which means he is in charge of the new version of Microsoft Office. Because this software is such an overwhelming standard in business and government, any change to this technology is significant. The new version of Office completely embraces the use of XML technology as an integral part of the software. Because of the possibilities such as easier integration between documents and court case management databases, I am very much looking forward to his talk.

PDF for Lawyers Web Site

Wandering around the web today I found a blog called PDF for Lawyers. It has good information generally about PDF files and has links to information about digital signatures, scanners for lawyers, and, most interesting, PDF redaction

Federal Judicial Center Weighted Caseload Study

While doing some work last week I stumbled upon the Federal Judicial Center's Weighted Caseload Study web page. This study was the first to use the courts automated case management system to compile event information from over 297,000 cases. The entire report and more importantly, documents relating to the methodology are posted.

NCSC Court Technology Survey

The National Center for State Courts needs your help. In preparation for the Ninth Court Technology Conference and to provide information directly to you for use in CITOC, we ask that you participate in our first comprehensive online court technology survey. As you know, technology has had a significant impact upon court operations and organization during the past decade. But there has not been a comprehensive survey to determine which and where courts have made these changes.

Our aim is to collect this information this summer, analyze it, and make it available at CTC9 and shortly thereafter online. The survey is self-compiling and so we will be able to make the full raw data set available. We believe that the subsequent report will provide you with a resource as to what courts are investing in technology. Hopefully this will assist you in connecting with courts with similar technology and plans for the future.

For those of you who are on statewide court systems, please note that your state CIO/IT director has previously been contacted. However, we still need information about your courtroom and related technology implementations.

The survey will take approximately 30-40 minutes to complete. If you wish to download a complete copy of the survey in preparation (advised), a PDF version is available.

(The online survey is no longer available.)

If you should have any questions, please feel free to contact Jim McMillan at the National Center for State Courts at jmcmillan@ncsc.dni.us

Israel's New Court Automation System

Microsoft has posted a white paper and slide show on Israel's new court automation program. They write: "the Israeli Court House Management is replacing the manual administration of hardcopy documents used by Israel's courts with a paperless system. Electronic versions of all documents submitted to and issued by the courts will be created using optical character recognition (OCR). Known as the Next Generation Court System (NGCS), the solution will allow lawyers and the public to research case documents 24 hours a day."

AIJA Conference Announcement

Our friend Anne Wallace at the Australian Institute for Judicial Administration passed along this announcement for their next conference:

AIJA Annual Conference, 7-9 October 2005, Wellington, New Zealand

This year, the AIJA will return to New Zealand for its 23rd Annual AIJA Conference. The theme for the conference will be 'Technology, Communication, Innovation,' with a focus on issues arising from the use of the technology in courts and tribunals - in particular, the delivery of electronic services, communication with the media and the public, privacy and access to data, transformation of business processes, and computer-simulated evidence in the courtroom.

CATO Reminder

Mike Adams, Treasurer for the Conference of Appellate Technology Officials sent us a reminder to register for their annual conference as soon as possible! The conference will take place in Key West, Florida, August 5th - 8th, 2005 in conjunction with the National Conference of Appellate Court Clerks. Registration is $350 and the registration form and agenda are both available on their website.

The conference will be held at the Wyndham Casa Marina Resort. For hotel reservations using their group rate go to www.wyndhamevents.com/casa/nca31.htm . (Please reserve your room as soon as possible as space is limited!)

GJXDM Users' Conference Wrap-Up

There were several excellent sessions wrapping up the GJXDM Users' Conference last week in Atlanta, Georgia. The keynote for Friday was a presentation on the parallel efforts of the GJXDM and its use in the creation of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). The joint efforts of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are unparalleled.

Watch the CTB for links to the conference papers and presentations when they are posted.

Tagging Legal XHTML Information White Paper

John McClure at Hypergrove Engineering informed us that a White Paper "Tagging Legal XHTML Information" has been published. (This paper is no longer available.) This paper explores the relationship between information schemas ("vocabularies") and a user process described as "information tagging." This process is often necessary in the legal and services industries where information locked in an XHTML format is to be semantically tagged. The 'semantic menus' are generated from an OWL schema of the information models that have been drafted by LegalXHTML.org for legal instruments, contacts, roles, events, properties, objects, and topics, and so for this reason, expert functional users must validate the structure and contents of the information schema. This paper is published by a new organization focused on the integration of XHTML 2.0, the Resource Description Language, and the Dublin Core technologies. Its functional scope is the set of documents that are signed (making them by definition, instruments) and which may have numbered clauses, paragraphs or tables. Supporting schemas, resources, stylesheets, and other information are being published.

Jim Keane

It is with great sadness that we pass along the announcement that Jim Keane passed away on June 10, 2005. Jim was a tireless advocate for the improvement of the legal system through technology. Most recently he was the director of the ABA lawyers section of the E-Courts 2004 conference. Jim was involved in so many activities involving the American Bar Association, Maryland Bar Association, E-Filing, and LegalXML, that it is difficult to list them all. He will be greatly missed by his friends here at the NCSC and elsewhere

GJXDM - Thursday Morning

I attended three session this morning at the GJXDM Users' Conference being held in Atlanta, Georgia this week.

The first session was about "How Privacy Supports Integrated Justice Systems" presented by Cindy Southworth. Cindy is an advocate and focuses upon the need for protecting domestic violence victims. She pointed out that data on DV victims could potentially emerge on a 911 RMS, or other systems that would allow an abuser to discover their location. So her advice was that privacy and data protection needs to be built into the design and process rules for the database and message technology.

The second session was on the "OASIS Exchange Document Methodology Naming and Design Rules" by John Ruegg from Los Angeles. He is chair of the Integrated Justice Technical Committee for the Names and Design Rules to provide guidance for customization of GJXDM schema structures.

And the third session was on the Maricopa County (Phoenix) ICJIS project. They have done considerable work using GJXDM and have graduated from an EAI (Enterprise Application Intgration) approach to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Conference materials are going to be posted. I just don't know where yet. More to come.

National Judicial College Survey on E-filing

While we are waiting for news from the GJXDM Users' Conference, we received notice today about the publication of a new survey on electronic filing conducted by the National Judicial College and Lexis-Nexis File and Serve. More than 1,500 judges responded to the survey. Some of the key findings from the survey are:

• Courts Recognize a Continuing Problem with Caseloads and Managing Paper
• Momentum is Clearly Growing for E-filing
• Support from Clerks and Legal Community Expected
• E-filing May Provide a New Source of Non-tax Funding
• Potential Barriers Identified

CTB at GJXDM Users' Conference

NCSC staff will be posting notes from the GJXDM Users' Conference later this week on the Court Technology Bulletin. Check back here to learn what is being talked about in Atlanta.

Microsoft Announces Next Version of Office Adopts XML

According to Internet News: Microsoft to Adopt XML Formats in Office 12. The next version of the most widely used word processing program on the planet will use XML as a default storage format. Similar to OpenOffice.org, the new approach will "zip" together all of the necessary XML files into one. What this potentially means for Courts is: First, because the electronic file is XML it could potentially be used for achiving. Second, it will likely be possible for case management vendors and others to be able to do more with output documents and reports. Third, database schemas developed with GJXDM may be able to be used directly in Word or Excel (and other Office applications) to more easily tag and identify data for later automatic storage in your case or document management system. And fourth, as the article mentions, it will increase security since it will become close to impossible to embed computer viruses within a document.

PBS TV Program - Red Hook Justice

The advanced Red Hook (New York City) Community Court will be featured on a new PBS television film titled "Red Hook Justice". The Community Court has received technical support from the Center for Court Innovation since inception. The program's website describes the court:

"Unlike traditional courts, community courts focus on bringing citizens and the criminal justice system together in order to solve community problems. By integrating the work of traditionally separate agencies - criminal justice operations, social service providers, public defenders, police and community members - community courts are a product of collaboration."

The program airs at various times on PBS and so please be advised to check the film's website or your local television schedule for viewing in your area.

RFID Technology Tested in Los Angeles Jail

According to "L.A. County Jail to Track Inmates" from RFID News (via Slashdot), the Los Angeles County Jail will be testing RFID technology to track detainees in their facility. (For those of you who don't think they have run into this technology yet, if you have bought or rented a videotape or DVD in the past couple of years you might have noticed a small black "security device" attached to the case. RFID technology is what sets off the scanners located at the exits doors to the store.)

Outlook Calendar Tip

The default block of time for Microsoft Outlook Calendar is 30 minutes. A recent tip from the June 7, 2005 edition of PC Magazine (page 107) shows how to easily change that setting. First, start Outlook Calendar. Next, right-click on the time scale shown on the left side of the calendar display. This allows you to set the default time blocks to as little as five minutes. The setting also changes the default amount of time for appointments. But according to PC Magazine it only works in Day or Work Week view. Not surprising since Microsoft packs a lot of information in the 7-day and monthly view. This might be of some help to you busy judges out there.

Wireless Devices in Federal Courts

"The Third Branch" newsletter issued by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has an interesting article on how their courts are dealing with the increasing problems created by wireless devices. In the article "Wireless Devices in Federal Courts " it's stated that "180 million Americans are wireless subscribers" and that "no one-size-fits-all decision is possible at this time."

Press Announcement - The 1st GJXDM Users' Conference

Bureau of Justice Assistance Announces - The First Annual GLOBAL JXDM Users' Conference

WASHINGTON, DC - The Office of Justice Program's (OJP) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) announces the first U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Annual Global Justice Extensible Markup Language (XML) Data Model (GJXDM) Users' Conference. The event will feature critical technical and policy-level sessions and important discussions of exemplary implementations using XML technology designed to reduce crime and fight terrorism. It will be held on June 8-10, 2005, in Atlanta, Georgia, and is sponsored in partnership with SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, and the GJXDM Training and Technical Assistance Committee (GTTAC).

Careful What You Electronically Redact

Recently, a report issued by the Italian defense department tried to use Adobe Acrobat to "redact" the text that was deemed classified by simply changing the color to be the same as the document background. In "Acrobat user gaffe exposes classified Defense information," posted by Government Computer news, an Italian Blogger discovered the problem shortly after the article was posted. Lesson for courts; make sure that sensitive information is completely eliminated from the document before creating the PDF. This may also require saving the document as text first.

GJXDM Users' Conference Registration is Open

1st Annual Global Justice XML Data Model (Global JXDM) Users' Conference registration is now open at the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs website. The conference is scheduled to be held June 8-10 in Atlanta, Georgia.