Florida Courts Offer New Litigant Help App

In an article posted at WFSU Public Media on December 15, 2017, we learned about the new Florida Courts Mobile App that was unveiled by Chief Justice Jorge Labarga for the Florida Civil Justice Commission.  It was noted in the article that “Former Florida Bar president and Commission on Access to Civil Justice member Greg Coleman says improved mobile access will help people who can’t afford attorneys.”

Structuring Court Communications with an App

Courts are different than many other businesses or services.  A rather obvious statement I know.  But a very important difference is that we have very formal court rules and legal statutes that create the steps, as well as boundaries, in how information is presented.  The rules also determine how the courts evaluate the completeness and truthfulness of the information presented.  Because of these structures and rules, I have been very cautious about the court's use of social media that as we know, have very few if any rules.

But communication is hard for many people.  This is especially true for communication that is structured to persuade or argue a point of view or law.  Therefore, an app that helps people, especially the self-represented litigants to accomplish this, is of great interest to me.

Microsoft/Legal Aid Tech/Voice-Response Portals

There is so much to this story I couldn’t really write a title that reflected all of the exciting news.  We learned that Microsoft is currently investing in applying their new AI enabled voice-response technology to the problem of legal aid for the disadvantaged.  They have engaged with our friends and experts in the subject at the Legal Services Corporation and Probono.net. Much more below...

This and That in Court Technology – July, 2017

Library of Congress Exhibition Image

This month's news about court technology and related topics includes CTC 2017 Experts, a proposed American Bar Association resolution, 10 tips for IT administrators to deal with password lockout, Margaret Hagan's artwork and observations from the NACM/IACA conference, the Center for Court Innovation's treatment courts online training offerings, the IJIS Institute announces a new Executive Director, and the Library of Congress exhibition, "Drawing Justice: The Art of Courtroom Illustration".

Technology Solutions for Self-Represented Litigants

The University of Denver's Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) announced the release of Court Compass: Mapping the Future of User Access Through Technology, a compendium and analysis of court-offered solutions for self-represented litigants (SRLs), along with maturity models to guide the development of integrated solutions in courts nationwide. See this recent post on the IAALS Online Issues Blog for more details.

IAALS is also participating with a number of other organizations, including the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), on the newly formed OASIS Litigant Portal Technical Committee (LP TC). 

The LP TC will be developing technical standards for litigant portal interfaces that will expedite and simplify development of solutions to assist potential litigants without legal representation overcome barriers of cost and complexity. The work of the LP TC will leverage experiences in recent portal projects as well as requirements identified in a 2015 report titled Building a Litigant Portal: Business and Technical Requirements. Any OASIS member may participate on the LP TC. If you're interested but not yet a member of OASIS, information on how to join is available here.

Microsoft AI Services are Getting Real

Brussels Atomium

An excellent article posted on arstechnica.com on May 10, 2107  titled: “Microsoft’s bid to bring AI to every developer is starting to make sense”.  The subtitle is: “The API’s are getting good enough to be built into production systems”.  This is getting interesting.  More on the article below.

This and That in Court Technology – January, 2017

Just like the National Football League (USA style pictured here), there is a lot of news regarding digital transformation.  The edition has notes on an American Bar Association report on E-Briefing, Nebraska appellate court E-filing, a Robot Lawyer application for parking tickets, a RAND corporation report on “Future Proofing” justice, commentary on potentially opening California legal publication, and a couple of technologies that need to be sent to the trash bin.

Online Identity, Verified?

http://www.berkeleyside.com/img_7570-2/ 

During the fantastic Law and Courts in an Online World conference in Melbourne, Australia the subject of online identity verification came up.  So I looked to see what services are potentially available to E-filing services and courts?

Maryland Courts Release Law Help Mobile App

Thanks to our good friend Bonnie Hough we learned that the Maryland Judiciary has a free mobile app that provides easy access to tools and resources to aid Marylanders in using the courts and getting legal help.  The Maryland Law Help app includes: self-help videos, court form finders, direct links to CALL or CHAT directly with an attorney at the Md. Courts Self-Help Center, access to the People's Law Library and court legal help pages, as well as  information on  law libraries, mediation and language access. The app is available for Apple and Android devices through the App Store and Google Play.  For more information see: http://mdcourts.gov/legalhelp/mobileapp.html

Congratulations to the Maryland Judiciary for some great work.

Some News Notes

A busy couple of weeks.  But we wanted to share three notes about “The Free Law Project” Judicial Database, Microsoft’s partnership with the Legal Service Corporation and Pro Bono Net, and some recent legal action involving digital evidence.

This and That in Court Technology – March, 2016

Mecklenburg County Courtroom Tech

Court technology related news from North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Indiana, Arizona and the UK in this month's edition of This and That.

This and That in Court Tech – February, 2016

Time again for another installment of “This and That”.  We have news about Legal Services Corporation grants, Baton Rouge Louisiana Family Court self-help website, US Federal Court law library changes, an article from Harvard Business Review, Microsoft releasing to open source artificial intelligence framework software, widely varying software licensing costs for police in the UK, and the CTB listed as one of the 50 must read blogs by State Tech Magazine.

An Interview with ProBono.net’s Claudia Johnson

Left to Right: Xander Karsten, Claudia Johnson,
and Liz Keith of Probono.net

One of our good friends in the court/justice technology business, Ms. Claudia Johnson of ProBono.net was recently interviewed.

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The interview was conducted by Mr. Stanley Ramdhany, a senior at Columbia University majoring in Sociology with a particular interest in the field of law and society.

He writes:

“In the field of public interest work, Claudia Johnson is renowned as one of the first law professionals to address the union between technology and legal aid.  On the topic of how she first entered the field, Claudia stated, “I decided to go to law school at U Penn, and there I fell in love with public interest work, by working with DV victims in Northern Philadelphia. At this point, I was very interested in national origin discrimination and LEP advocacy, so I did my Skadden Fellowship on language access for Medicaid/disabled communities with focus on LEP groups.”  It was there that Claudia first focused on the union of legal services and technology:  “I wanted to have a way to track patterns by health care plan, zip code, and client demographics. So I was looking for a relatable multidimensional database—in 1997. That did not exist in legal services, so we had to build our own.”

Click here for the full in-depth interview (and in my opinion it is a good read to learn about this amazing lady)