This and That in Court Tech – January 2020

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Court technology news this month includes the Florida court’s E-Notify system, automatic transcription news, US Federal Courts PACER, and observations on how to make access to justice (A2J) work, and digital documentation using AI.

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Florida Courts Rolling Out E-Notify System

Via Florida Bar News we learned that based upon positive results from a pilot program in three counties that the courts “expect to launch “E-Notify” statewide by the end of January”, 2020.

“E-Notify users are directed to a website where they register for free. In addition to choosing how they are alerted, users also have a choice of when they are alerted — any combination of 14-days, seven-days, or the day before.”

“My judges here in Okaloosa County are loving it, they’re all over it,” Okaloosa Court Clerk JD Peacock said. "Judges are urging defendants to register when they issue instructions".

The E-Notify website is: https://enotify.flcourts.org/

Congratulations Florida! 

Automated Transcription News

We are continuing to watch the growing technology field of automated transcription.  This month we found an article titled “Say What?  A Non-Scientific Comparison of Automated Transcription Services” that was posted on The OpenNotebook website.  In the article, the author discusses one human transcription service and compares it to four automated services, Temi, Otter, Sonix, and Trint.  While the article is aimed at journalists and academicians, it is very interesting.

Second, in a subject related article we learned that the “AI” based automated transcription service, Verbit received a second round of capital funding of $31 million dollars.  For more on Verbit’s legal-related offerings see their webpage at https://verbit.ai/industries-legal/

PACER User Group Selected

The US Federal Courts have been criticized for many years, including lawsuits, regarding the policies and cost of their public access PACER systems.  In response we via learned the following Press Release published on January 9, 2020:

“Twelve people from diverse backgrounds in the law, media, government, and academia have been selected for a new public user group to provide advice and feedback on ways to improve the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service and other electronic public access services provided by the Judiciary. The group is expected to hold its inaugural meeting in February.”
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“The members of the Electronic Public Access Public User Group represent a cross-section of PACER users. They were selected based on user type, level of experience using PACER, frequency of usage, an account status in good standing, and a commitment to collecting additional feedback from their peers. 

The group will discuss PACER and other Judiciary electronic public access services from the user’s perspective and will recommend ideas for improvements and expansion. Meeting agendas, minutes, and other relevant information will be available online."


´What Works to Improve A2J´

We learned that our good friend Professor Maurits Barendrecht, Research Director at HiIL, and author of the NYP, Charging for Justice has created a “three-part blog series on delivering equal access to justice for all”:

“The first blog post in the series (What Works to Improve A2J 1. Making people agree … and comply, perhaps) takes stock of the data we have now and tests commonly held assumptions about improving access to justice against those data.”

Click here for Part 1 of the series.

Digital Documentation Using AI

An interesting article posted on the OpenKM blog last month discusses how digital documentation can be created using artificial intelligence.  The author, Amanda Jerelyn writes that “AI will revolutionize how data is classified, digitized, extracted, analyzed, and secured.”.

The full blog post is available here.