More This and That in Court Technology for October, 2014

This has been an especially busy month in Court Tech.  We share what we learned in this second edition for October, 2014.

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Maryland Launches Electronic Case Management System

On October 14, 2014 we learned via a Washington Post article that the:

 “Maryland court system is launching an electronic case management system to eventually enable people statewide to file and view court documents on their computers. 

Tuesday’s launch in Annapolis makes electronic filing mandatory for attorneys practicing in Anne Arundel County and the state appellate courts. 

The Maryland Judiciary plans to roll out the system, county by county, over the next five years.”

The full article is available here.

Court Technology in Europe Report

Thanks to our friend Rob Roberts at Legal Informatics we learned that The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice has released their 2014 report.  In the report we see a compendium of general court automation progress including videoconferencing.  But reading the footnotes we learn little nuggets of information such as “Denmark: “other” means general public encrypted/secure e-mail (mandatory for citizens and companies from 2014).  We must look into that more in the future.

You can download a PDF copy of the report here. The section on court technology starts on page 123.

Alamance County, North Caroline Electronic Protective Order System

Our friends at Government Computer News write about the benefits to victims of abuse in obtaining protective orders with their new Electronic Protective Order Systems (EPOS).  They report that:

“(w)ithin six months of EPOS’ use, only 6 percent of victims failed to follow through with the protective order process, compared to 12 percent before the system existed”.  And another benefit is that (t)he sheriff’s department also gets an electronic version so that all deputies have a copy of the protective order on their laptops.  They can print and serve it immediately”.  

Impressive results.  Read more about it here.

US Courts Improve Integrated Voice Response (IVR) System for Jurors

The US Federal Courts have been a long user of IVR technology (see PACER).  In a new press release they describe that their new system is web-browser based, can run on any court computer, and for the first time allows potential jurors to leave voice mail responses.  They further report that “(t)he new IVR already has been installed in about a dozen district courts, with a national rollout slated to start in November.”

Click here to read the full press release issued on October 22, 2014.

New York Family Court Magistrate allows service of process via Facebook

Thanks to Mark Schwartz via the LinkedIn e-Filing/e-Service of Court Documents group, we learned of an article on Lexology.com that “a Staten Island, New York family court official—recently permitted a father seeking to modify his child support payments to serve process on the child’s mother by sending her a digital copy of the summons and petition through her Facebook account.”

The author of the article, John F. Delaney of Morris & Foerster LLP goes on to discuss additional issues and precedent in his post that you can access here.

Texas E-Filing Reports on User Experience

Thanks to our friend Kendall Collins on reporting the Texas Lawyer magazine article: “Stats Shed Light on Lawyer’s Top E-Filing Complaints".  In summary:

“Lawyers on both sides of the bar say they've noticed improvements in the state's new e-filing system, and court administrators have the statistics to prove it. But the stats also show areas for improvement. 

The data uses hard numbers to quantify the top e-filing complaints that really bother lawyers: supposed delays between when an attorney files a document and a clerk accepts it, and the rate at which a clerk returns an e-filing for correction. The information shows that EFileTexas.gov is performing well overall, but that a lawyer's individual experience really depends upon where he works. Some clerks are better than others at quickly processing documents and maintaining low return-for-correction rates.”

The article goes on to describe frustration with slow court turnaround on E-filed documents during the first months, but that the problem has been significantly reduced more recently.