The Purposes of Court Technology

I thought that I would share a post on the purpose of various court work processes and how technology has (or in some instances has not) changed them.  In other words, why do we do what we do in the legal/court system?

Let’s begin:

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1. Registry/docket/case history records.  We have discussed this before in our court case management system series. We note that the courts capture the case events that have occurred and usually in separate systems, perhaps some notice documents that have been sent to set a future work task.  These work tasks can be a response from a case party or say a hearing.  But why put this into a big ledger book or a list in the CCMS?  It is to provide a summary of the case matters and to show the flow of the case events. 

I have seen registry books organized in columns that reflect typical caseflow steps.  Entries in the columns may or may not be completed depending upon the case events or, the cell is even manually split by the registrar/clerk to reflect that the event occurred multiple times.  The difficulty with this format is that it is very hard to easily see both a single and multiple case workflow and hence status. 

Therefore, if the purpose of these records/process is to monitor and memorialize case flow and status, should computerized CCMS are far superior to these huge registry books (although court staff can benefit from the weight training, they provide).  And more importantly, the CCMS can provide reports by the court, judge, case type, case status and more that significantly helps the courts to manage their caseload.

2. Minute/courtroom record books.  These books were created to capture the notes of the activities that occurred in the courtroom.  Before there were courtroom clerical staff and stenographic court reporters, judges wrote notes in these books about the activity that occurred inside the courtroom.  These notes, in turn, were then read and converted into documents such as summons and decisions along with entries into the registry books.  With the advent of courtroom staff and more importantly, court reporting/record keepers this document became redundant.  It is better now to use automation to create the courtroom “E-Bench” (see below) to facilitate the outcome documents/actions/notices instead of this redundant record.

3. Notices and summons.  I am going to make the most obvious statement here, courts live on documents.  This is because they are used to capture and communicate information.  Courts continue to rely upon the postal mail and couriers to deliver information. 

Today we have e-mail (for over 30 years in some jurisdictions), text, messenger, and social media type communications that work massively faster than paper documents.  So, if the purpose of notices and summons is to communicate then we should be adding these technology approaches.  And the “summons and notices” would be better hosted in a secure website/cloud sharing service that are essentially always available, can be verified and, has the possibility of being secured.  The Connecticut Judicial Branch provides a good example of this via an “E-Services Inbox for Court Notices” that they created in February 2017. 

4. Other court documents.  The function is to present structured information input along with memorializing (archive) process and ultimately the case decisions.  This is the most complex part of all court records.  Full-text search is useful, but it will be better when we can structure such as meta-data to them.  Recently Microsoft released “Smart Tagger” which is in the direction that I think courts need to go in this area.

5. Forms.  The essential purpose of forms is to organize information so that it is easier to communicate data for each party along with the judges and counsel to understand.  Forms are tremendously helpful to the court professionals but are daunting to the public.  This is because they are most often written by lawyers and judges who are trying to make sure that the legal meaning of the document is preserved. 

Once again, we have the technology to help.  This is where A2J Author and JustFix.nyc and many others have been created.  If I could suggest one overall strategy for courts that would be of great help it is to stop making paper forms and put efforts into systems that help the parties to enter data into online systems.  These systems such as BC court help both the parties and the decision-makers as they are flexible for both input and output.

6. Trials and hearings.  This is one area that many courts are trying to improve.  The purpose is, of course, is to present oral communication in a structured way.  This structure depends on the type of legal system that exists in the jurisdiction (civil, common, Sharia, and customary).  Some of the technology that is employed here is machine stenography, digital audio, and video recording, and audio and videoconferencing.  We have also written about “E-Bench”/Judicial Tools systems that facilitate the judge’s notes, outcome capture, and document creation.

7. Signatures.  These are for validation that a document or message is complete.  And verification that the person/court/organization sending the document/data is who they say they are.  Notarization is the verification of the identity of the person who is signing the document.  We have written about the weaknesses of “wet” biometric handwritten signatures as a method of validation many times in the past.  This is where Blockchain technology has some promise but, it is the host system storing providing the document/data that is the solution to verification.  That said, we have also written about the need for visual verification as well here.

In summary.  We do the work in the courts that we do for a reason.  But we also develop technology to make that work better/easier/faster for everyone.