This and That in Court Tech - July 2019

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This month’s summer basket of Court Technology news includes the CTC 2019 agenda announcement, Arizona’s new eAccess Online Portal, a note on savings created by the use of the Florida E-Filing Portal, an award for the Pennsylvania Court Guardianship technology program, a report for the England and Wales courts on legal technology, and a tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office 365’s e-discovery tools.






Start Planning Your CTC 2019 Experience

The agenda for CTC 2019 is now available online.  The conference organizers write that it’s mostly complete, with just a few details still being nailed down.

Now is a great time to start planning your days in New Orleans at the world’s largest court technology conference. CTC 2019 kicks into high gear Tuesday with Richard Susskind’s keynote on the future of justice and continues with more than 50 education sessions covering six tracks. CTC 2019 is packed with opportunity to learn and network. You’ll need a plan to make the most of it using the CTC 2019 App.  You can download it here.

Arizona eAccess Online Portal Announced

Via press release, July 10, 2019:  In a continuing effort to promote access to justice, the Arizona Supreme Court recently launched an online repository of Arizona court records called eAccess. eAccess provides convenient 24 x 7 online access to case data and documents for the public, attorneys, government users, the media, and litigants.  Individuals and businesses can register with a username and password to view and purchase copies of court records. The eAccess web portal also offers the ability to purchase electronically certified documents.

In its first phase, eAccess offers online access to select civil and criminal case data and documents from the superior court in fourteen of Arizona’s fifteen counties. Pima county documents will be available in the summer of 2019.  Access to view, save, and print court documents is through a monthly paid subscription or by paying on a document-by-document basis. The records available through eAccess will still be available directly through the court or clerk’s office where the case is assigned.

The supreme court anticipates expanding online court record access to justice and municipal courts and to additional superior court case types. Public court records that are not available through eAccess will remain available from the court or clerk’s office where the case is assigned.
eAccess was designed to make access to records faster and more convenient for court users than traveling to a court building during regular business hours. The web portal is expected to reduce demands on the courts’ resources, allowing court staff more time to focus on the courts’ core functions and to improve customer service.

To view court data or documents on eAccess, follow the instructions to register online at https://azcourtdocs.gov.  And to learn more about eAccess, visit www.azcourts.gov/eaccess.

Florida Courts E-Filing Saves Millions

An article in Florida Bar News reports on the success of the E-Filing portal in real financial terms.

They write that “during a meeting of the Florida Courts E-Filing Authority” that many statistics were reported by our good friend, Portal Project Manager Carolyn Weber.  She reported that the portal has saved more than $30 million in postage for both filing and service since 2014.   The article also parenthetically states “That $30 million estimate does not account for savings lawyers would have realized by conducting service through email, which has been available for a few years, but it also does not include money saved if lawyer and staff time is necessary to prepare mail or email service or to get documents to the courthouse or other parties.”

That said, it is fair to state that E-Filing results in real and significant savings for all participants.

Pennsylvania’s Court Guardianship Technology Program Receives National Recognition

Via press release on July 15, 2019, “Pennsylvania courts have been selected this year as a two-time winner of the National Association for Court Management (NACM) and Court Information Technology Officers Consortium (CITOC) 2019 Technology Awards.

AOPC’s recently implemented Guardianship Tracking System (GTS) won the Court Process Innovations Award in the Court Management category for its “optimization of the way people, processes and technology work together to transform courts”. Among its many benefits, the GTS:

• flags potential guardianship problems immediately 
• eliminates the potential for an unsuitable guardian to relocate to another county
• allows guardians to file reports entirely online and sends reminders about upcoming filing dates

The GTS is a product of the recommendations made by the Elder Law Task Force and was developed by the Office of Elder Justice in the Courts and AOPC/IT under direction from the Supreme Court’s Advisory Council on Elder Justice in the Courts.

For more information about GTS, click here. visit

“The Use and Regulation of Technology in the Legal Sector beyond England and Wales”

An interesting research paper that was created for the Legal Services Board by Alison Hook of the Hook Tangaza consultancy was posted.  The paper looks at “the development and application of technology in the legal sector” around the world.

They also posted a very nice “Functional Framework” graphic which is shown below that provides a map for how to think about the items in their report.

They also list five general trends that I summarize below:

1. Legal business models being used in new ventures “could challenge existing codes of conduct”.
2. Many consumer legal tech providers are not yet using Ai, “this will come”.
3. “Legal tech is crossing borders”
4. “Universities are increasingly offering courses to combine law and technology”.
5. “It is a difficult environment for legal tech startups since they” must contend with both the challenges “all startups face but also the regulatory challenges”.

And the report also discusses ODR including our favorite, BC’s Civil Resolution Tribunal”.

A full PDF version of the report is posted for download here.

Microsoft Office 365 E-Discovery Tools

Via LinkedIn, we learned that our friend Tom O’Conner of the Gulf Coast Legal Technology Center in New Orleans (http://gulfltc.org/about-us/ ) posted a fun and interesting YouTube video on the e-discovery tools that are provided in Office 365.  This is possibly useful for our judicial friends to better understand how one can work with electronic documents and evidence.  The YouTube “class” is available here.