This and That in Court Technology, May 2018

https://goo.gl/9BrHdZ

This month we learn about PatentBot, the new Oasis-Open LegalRuleML specification, some interesting thoughts on how to better replicate litigation service systems, Microsoft Research podcasts and free E-books, Oracle’s chatbot demonstration system, Notepad ++, and some graduation gift ideas.

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More Intermediation – PatentBot

It strikes me that much of the “legal hacker” conferences and “hack-a-thons” result in various intermediation systems that improve the UX (user experience).  These are good things to do but, they do rely on a lot of foundational work that many of my friends have spent their entire careers creating.  I myself have said about the E-filing project work is that it was analogous to a municipality laying in their water and sewer system (hence the picture of the Roman Aqueduct above).

That said, I do like the idea of the PatentBot system that provides a greatly improved interface for registering trademarks.  One of the founders, Mr. Valentin Pivovarov explains how the system works in an article from last summer posted on the Medium.com website. 

Well done.

OASIS is pleased to announce that LegalRuleML Core Specification Version 1.0 

The OASIS LegalRuleML TC [1] has been approved as an OASIS Committee Specification.

The need for the specification/standard is that “legal texts, e.g. legislation, regulations, contracts, and case law, are the source of norms, guidelines, and rules. As text, it is difficult to exchange specific information content contained in the texts between parties, to search for and extract structured the content from the texts, or to automatically process it further. Legislators, legal practitioners, and business managers are, therefore, impeded from comparing, contrasting, integrating, and reusing the contents of the texts, since any such activities are manual. In the current web-enabled context, where innovative eGovernment and eCommerce applications are increasingly deployed, it has become essential to provide machine-readable forms (generally in XML) of the contents of the text.

The objective of the LegalRuleML Core Specification Version 1.0 is to define a standard (expressed with XML-schema and Relax NG and on the basis of Consumer RuleML 1.02) that is able to represent the particularities of the legal normative rules with a rich, articulated, and meaningful mark-up language.”

This Committee Specification is an OASIS deliverable, completed and approved by the TC and fully ready for testing and implementation.  The prose specifications and related files are available here in HTML, in an editable source document (.docx) here, and in PDF here.

How do we encourage legal service innovation replication?

Our good friend Margaret Hagan (http://www.margarethagan.com/) writes:

One of the teams in my Intro to Legal Design class this quarter is working with Legal Services of North Florida to think through a replication strategy for their recent services innovations. In the process, they’ve refocused to a wider scale: how can the access to justice innovation community get better at replication?

This means doing more and better homework before initiating a new tech or service project, on the part of people with ideas for doing things better. How can we incentivize more project leads and aspiring innovators to know what other legal groups and law-analogous groups are doing, that can be the basis for replication (rather than starting from scratch)?

And it means getting better at capturing past projects, so they are easy to research. How can we better document, package, and make discoverable all of the protocols, insights, and logistics that have gone into a project?

Click here to see more of her post and comments.

Microsoft Research Podcasts and Free E-Books

We who work in the courts love free things.  Microsoft Research posts interesting podcasts at:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/category/podcast/ 

Some recent interviews were:

• Advancing accessibility with Dr. Meredith Ringel Morris
• Not lost in translation with Arul Menezes
• Clouds, catapults and life after the end of Moore’s Law with Dr. Doug Burger
• AI, machine learning and the reasoning machine with Dr. Geoff Gordon

And Microsoft also give away “E-books”.  One is titled “Application innovation through cloud & data: Real-time personalized experiences at global scale”.   They write:

“Cloud-based advanced services, like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data analytics, open new opportunities for technical teams to drive business value. Find inspiration and guidance about what kind of transformational changes are possible and how you can achieve them. Download this free e-book, Designed to Disrupt: Reimagine Your Apps and Transform Your Industry, to help you:”

• Use cloud technology to give your company a competitive edge by accessing new markets, enhancing your customers’ experience, and increasing operational efficiency. 
• Learn from companies who have successfully used innovative technologies—such as cognitive services, Internet of Things (IoT) and bots—to grow their businesses. 
• Create a digital journey roadmap, with envisioning sessions to reimagine your company’s goals and practical tools to bring your visions to life.

Oracle – Build a “Chatbot” in Minutes

In the, it is always fun to play with new toys category, I saw an article in “Oracle Magazine” that went through the steps in creating a chatbot service.  I found the article online here.  Check it out.

Notepad ++

I always need a notepad-like application to clear out all manner of formatting when cutting and pasting text.  Notepad ++ is my new favorite for doing that.  They explain:

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Graduation Gift Guide from “The Verge” website

Last, “graduation season is a time to celebrate those graduating high school and college, but it’s also when people start thinking about what’s next. This is especially true if you are gripped with indecision about what to get as a gift for graduation, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or any special occasion in between.

Whether they’re transitioning into the workforce or heading back to school, we’ve consulted experts here at The Verge for some great gift ideas that they’ll not only like but will serve them well in the next stage of their life.”

See- https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17246952/graduation-gift-ideas-mothers-fathers-day-2018