Winter 2021
There is a massive amount of court technology news this month. We learned about, US Federal Courts response to the Covid-19 pandemic, conference news from the Innovating Justice 2021 and Legalweek 2021 events, California’s CourtStack initiative, Mark Beer’s upcoming talk on AI support for judicial decision making, Seattle and King County’s impact and response to the pandemic caseload, the NACM video podcast on Teleworking, and proposed USA federal government rules on digital format archiving.
As Pandemic Lingers, Courts Lean into Virtual Technology
Via press release on February 19, 2021.
“As she started a civil jury trial in early October, Judge
Marsha J. Pechman looked across her federal courtroom in Seattle, Washington.
It was completely empty.
The litigants and their lawyers beamed in via video. So did
her law clerks, and the court reporter tasked with transcribing the trial. Most
strikingly, the eight jurors deciding the case also were participating by video
from their homes.
Since the pandemic first closed many courts, one of the most
significant adjustments made by federal courts has involved the use of
electronic communications. Under provisions of the CARES Act, a COVID-19 relief
law passed last March, federal courts began conducting routine procedural
hearings, such as first appearances for criminal defendants, by telephone and
video hookups.
As the coronavirus (COVID-19) has dragged on, a small number
of courts have adapted electronic proceedings to meet more challenging
situations. Several courts have conducted virtual bench trials, which do not
require a jury. In a few cases, courts holding high-profile hearings have
needed to stretch virtual technology to accommodate large numbers of listeners.
In perhaps the most ambitious experiment yet, the Western District of
Washington recently began holding all-virtual jury trials in civil lawsuits.”
Click here for the rest of the release.
Innovating Justice Forum 2021
Last week I attended online this year's HiiL InnovatingJustice Forum ‘Making people-centered justice work’.
Highlight videos are available on YouTube and conference reports are posted
on their website.
I also want to commend the excellent online production by Ms.Kitty Leering of “DutchBlend”. She wrote
that “The production took place on the online event platform “Hopin” and using
the virtual studio “StreamYard”. Due to the snowstorm I could not even join the
(safely distanced) team in The Hague.
Congratulations to all.
Legalweek 2021
I think it is important to keep up with what is happening on
the lawyer/law services side of the world. And like many others, this year’s conference was held online. I found an excellent summary on the “epiq
angle” blog at: https://www.epiqglobal.com/en-us/thinking/blog/legalweek-2021-goes-virtual
Recommended.
California Courts Join Together to Create CourtStack
Court technologists in multiple California Courts have
banded together to “to deliver a common standards-based platform (CourtStack) that will
extend add-on solutions to all case management systems in an innovative and
industry-transformative way."
The project website “defines the problem” they are working
to solve.
“The case management system (CMS) and court applications
landscape in California is very diverse. It could be considered a microcosm of
the challenges that exist nationally when dealing with the vast assortment of
case management systems and the add-on applications that are required to
support the modern Digital Court. Case-in-point: our current case management
environment (both in California and nationally), requires that add-on solutions
be tightly coupled with an underlying case management system, creating a
significant deployment challenge for best-of-breed systems. Despite
considerable efforts across California to build innovative solutions in areas
like mobile case access, litigant and justice partner case access, and eFiling,
it has proven extremely difficult to deploy these systems in other Courts. An
unfortunate dichotomy has resulted: excellent software that has proven very
useful to the Courts but requires a software development team, a significant
amount of time, and a lot of money to implement. The investment for most Courts
is simply too steep.”
Therefore, the solution they are offering is:
“CourtStack is an active initiative that aims to solve this
problem by providing a platform and framework for building CMS add-on
solutions. The goal of CourtStack is to deliver a common standards-based
platform that will extend add-on solutions to all case management systems in an
innovative and industry-transformative way. Our CourtStack mission is
intentionally broad: “To empower the delivery of digital court services in an
innovative and industry transformative way, that is intelligent, efficient, and
cost-effective.”
Check out the project website for much more including documentation at https://courtstack.org/home
Mark Beer Scheduled to Present on the Increasing Role of AI in support of Judicial Decision Making
NCSC friend, Mark Beer will speak on the above-titled
subject matter on March 9, 2021, from 1:00 to 3:00 PM GMT (UK time – 5 hours later thanEST) in an online session hosted by the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law.
The presentation abstract states:
“AI is already being used by lawyers to analyze terabytes of
data to find supporting evidence for clients, both in commercial and
contentious matters. AI is being used to predict judicial and arbitral
outcomes, and even to advise on the best time of day to go before a particular
judge. AI is proving better at predicting judicial decisions than lawyers, and
at predicting recidivism and breach of court orders than experienced judges. AI
can sit for more than 7 hours a day, doesn’t take 8 weeks off for summer and
receives no salary or index linked pension.
That must make AI a better basis for judging citizens than
humans, especially with the Courts facing such significant backlogs?
But what of mercy and humanity? What of equity and justice?
What role do they have, and could AI ever be merciful?
The talk will look at the current use cases for AI in
support of judicial decision making, the direction of travel and we will debate
the possible future role of AI in dispute resolution.”
Seattle Courts Adjust to the Criminal Justice Problems
Caused by the Pandemic
An article by KOMO broadcast news notes the problems and
changes caused by civil unrest and the Covid-19 pandemic by the courts.
They write:
“After a summer of protests, there have been complaints at
the lack of prosecution and jail for people accused of resisting arrest,
failure to disperse and vandalism.
But the reasons behind why they are not in jail are less
about politics and more to do with COVID-19 and the case counts because of an
increase in violent crime.
“For example, municipal court is not doing any out of
custody arraignments," said Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who was once the
U.S. Attorney for Western Washington. “Well, you can't start the who criminal
process until someone has been arraigned, so we have to fix all parts of it.”
Seattle Municipal Court judges stopped out-of-custody
arraignments for social distancing purposes inside courtrooms and the jail on
November 23rd.
Arraignments for people charged with DUI, domestic violence
and mental health cases continue to be held.
Since that date court records show 525 other out-of-custody
cases have not been arraigned.
Every one of those defendants had been booked into jail and
released with the promise that will appear at their arraignment.”
There is much more. You can click the following for the full article and the prosecutors’ use of algorithms to decide on case priorities. https://komonews.com/news/operation-crime-justice/arrested-suspects-not-facing-charges-as-seattle-jails-become-more-obsolete
Court Administrator’s Discuss Teleworking
NACM (https://nacmnet.org/
) posted an interesting “Court Leader’s Advantage” video podcast this week (February18, 2021) on “Telework: Is There A Secret to Effective Management?”
The presentation description says “this video podcast episode
discusses the benefits and challenges of telework on court administration.
Viewers interested in teleworking, supervision, employee productivity, and
cybersecurity, will want to watch or listen to this podcast.”
Co-Host is Alyce Roberts, Special Projects Coordinator for
Alaska Court System
The panel of Court Administrators have each had diverse
experiences with teleworking within their courts. Our panel includes:
- Sam Hamrick, Court Executive Officer with the Superior Court in Riverside, California.
- Terri March, Court Administrator with the Justice Court in North Las Vegas, Nevada.
- Debbie Spradley, Trial Court Administrator with the Clackamas County Circuit Court in Oregon City, Oregon.
- Courtney Whiteside, Director with the Municipal Court in St. Louis, Missouri.
Last, for my technically and archival minded friends, there
is an interesting blog post on the proposed USA federal government rule from
NARA (USA National Archives and Records Administration) on the proposed “FederalRecords Management: Digitizing Permanent Records and Reviewing RecordsSchedules” published on December 1, 2020 (85 FR 77095) rule.
The proposal identifies acceptable PDF technology for
permanent records in § 1236.48 File format requirements. But, the PDF Association notes that PDF/A-4 was
not included in the proposed rule and they recommend that it is.
Click the following link for the full post. https://www.pdfa.org/digitizing-permanent-records-the-case-for-pdf-a-4/
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