In this month’s compendium, we have a lot of news and comments about electronic documents. The posts discuss online “phishing” scammers using fake legal documents, an audit report on the UK Court Modernization Program, a PDF standard implementation announcement by Microsoft, another court filer document redaction problem, the new public Texas court document portal, the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act and a personal note on Judge Dorothy Nelson.
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Legal Threats Effectively Used by Online “Phishing” Scammers
I have wanted to write for a while about an article Brian Krebs posted in May, 2019 title “Legal Threats Make Powerful Phishing Lures”. He writes:
“Some of the most convincing email phishing and malware attacks come disguised as nastygrams from a law firm. Such scams typically notify the recipient that he/she is being sued, and instruct them to review the attached file and respond within a few days — or else. Here’s a look at a recent spam campaign that peppered more than 100,000 business email addresses with fake legal threats harboring malware.”
We in the courts don’t help by clinging to antiquated ideas such as “official seals” and signatures.
These were the document authentication devices from the time of the Magna Carta. This is why I continue to stress that courts need to make it easier to verify legal documents either via an ID number or an online library (see the re:SearchTX article below). And once again please see the Smart Document Receipt Concept article I posted in 2015 for additional ideas on this topic.
UK Court Modernisation Program Report
We learn from an article posted on legalfutures.co.uk titled Court modernisation still has long way to go, NAO warns about some of the status of their efforts.
The article begins:
“HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has made “good progress” in transforming some services, but there are still “significant challenges” ahead for the court modernisation programme, the National Audit Office (NAO) said today.
Now around halfway through the programme, HMCTS is behind where it expected to be and has had to scale back its ambitions, the NAO said.
“While HMCTS has kept within budget, this has come at the cost of a reduced scope and lower savings.”
The rest of the rather detailed article is available via the link above.
PDF News
The PDF Association posted that Microsoft had an announcement about, “forthcoming major product support for PDF/UA”. The PDF/UA standard (UA standing for Universal Accessibility) is the “name for ISO 14289” that “provides definitive terms and requirements for accessibility in PDF documents and applications”. Microsoft’s announcement explains:
“Meeting customers accessibility needs is an important part of the software development process here at Microsoft. We’ve enhanced several accessibility items for report authors and viewers in this release, including official support for Alternative Text for report elements. Using tooltips, authors may specify text for each element on the report and have this properly identified by screen reader technology as such.”
In our opinion, this is a standard that the courts need to consider in their future plans.
Redaction Failure Exposed Secret Grand Jury Information
A Legaltechnews/Law.com article once again described that the old problem of cutting and pasting “black boxes” over PDF document text for redaction doesn’t do the job. This has been going on for more than 10 years (and probably longer since the first use of PDF in court e-filing goes back to at least 1998).
This came up just before I attended a session at CTC-2019 titled CMS Intelligence: Using AI in Trial and Appellate Courts, Israel. In the presentation they explained that while they have the court rules and procedures on redaction by the filers, their system does a second additional scan for sensitive information before it is committed to their document management system. That sounds like a good idea to me.
re:SearchTX Goes Public
We learned from a Law.com/Texas Lawyer article, “Texas Launches Public Portal to Make Most Civil Court Records Available Online” that extends the courts eFileTexas service. The article says:
“Since 2017, Texas judges, court clerks and attorneys have been able to use re:SearchTX to search for and view court documents that were e-filed in any of the state’s 254 counties. However, up until this point, lawyers were limited to viewing only cases in which they were attorneys of record.
Now, the public launch gives lawyers access to every case in the state, except for criminal cases.
Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, who’s been using re:SearchTX for two years to check trial court records that appellate attorneys cite in their briefs, said it’s saved his clerks from the cumbersome process of calling trial court clerks to request court documents.
“This way, you push a few buttons, and there it is,” he said.”
There is a short video (1:24) showing how the system works here.
21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act
This is what happens when news comes out during the holiday season.
I just became aware that last December 20th (2018) the USA Congress passed the above titled act to help move the government to “transition away from paper-based forms and create a modernized, digital experience for the government’s online services” Of most interest for our blog readers it “requires agencies to offer digital versions of all paper-based services and to accept electronic signatures from citizens.”
These kinds of initiatives usually filter to our state governments and courts and vendor offerings. So, it is something to watch.
A couple of blog articles on the new law have been posted by e-signature vendors one of which I used for quotes in the note above is available at:
https://www.esignlive.com/blog/21st-century-idea-act-digital-government
https://www.docusign.com/blog/the-21st-century-idea-act-is-now-law/
Judge Dorthey Wright Nelson Recognized
Last, I would like to share that the US Federal Courts posted an article on Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals Judge Nelson. I had the honor of participating in her class at the University of Southern California Law School via the Court Administration program. But also want to note that she was the author of “Cases and materials on judicial administration and administration of justice” published in 1974 by West Publishing. She is a true pioneer.
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