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