Some Practical Advice on File Naming Conventions

 

Continuing with our practical advice October...

Courts create a lot of document files.  Some of those files get uploaded, saved, and organized in the court's case management or electronic document management systems.  And some courts use tools like SharePoint.  But even these tools can benefit from a consistent useful file naming standard.  I looked online and found two excellent pages on the subject. 

More below…

New Legal Document Tools Announced

 

MaxPixel.net

Documents are the summer wheat that we make our court case bread (final product) from.  We have two interesting announcements to share in this week’s post from The Effectiveness Project and LegalXML LegalRuleML.

 

“Fixing” Criminal Justice Data and My Alternative Approach

 

Last month, the Arnold Ventures group released a report titled “We Need Criminal Justice Data That Doesn’t Exist.  Here’s How the Biden Administration Can FixIt.”

This is a subject near and dear to me as I have been working on much of this for a long time.  I agree with many parts of the report.  However, I was disappointed to see that the full report missed many standards and frameworks that have been previously built?  More below...

Comparative Statistical Model Standards

 

One “unicorn” (a mythical goal) in Court Technology has been that Case Management Systems will have the ability to create comparative case statistics between court systems. Policymakers love that idea so they can compare and punish/reward, but also perhaps better understand policy differences. The announcement that got me thinking about this is the recent NIEM 5.0 announcement that included as part of their update preparation for the future addition of GISM (Generic Statistical Information Model).

Also, understand that the ideal statistical comparison system doesn’t stop between courts, it extends to the full criminal and civil court systems. That brings us to discuss the new announcements and what they might mean for our future unicorn hunting.

This and That in Court Technology - July 2020

Assateague Island Wild Ponies

We have news about a report on protection order repositories, a drive-up clerk’s office that protects uses and staff, comments on impediments in the application of court and legal technology, the HiiL Charging for Justice report, the NIEM 5.1 beta standard announcement, AI closed captioning systems compared, and fun Zoom and Teams web video meeting backgrounds.

This and That in Court Technology May 2020

In this month’s highlights we share information about the PASS (Public Access Software Spec), our NCSC Tiny Chat about digital signatures, e-notarization and digital notice, Tyler’s Virtual Court offering, virtual court hearings in Nigeria, an electronic hearing practice guide posted by the Trinidad and Tobago Judiciary, and special offers by Microsoft for public safety and non-profits in response to the pandemic.

JTC Resource Bulletin - Cybersecurity Basics

In December 2019 the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) established by the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), the National Association for Court Management (NACM) and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) issued a new Resource Bulletinon Cybersecurity Basics for Courts.

This and That in Court Technology – Halloween 2019

In this “busy holiday” edition of the CTB we share news about ODR in Yolo County, California, ideas for finding money for justice programs, yet another ransomware attack, a new institute on Speech to Text technology, Alexa voice response for juror information in Orlando, Florida, a report on court digitization in the Dallas, Texas Municipal Court, a new Oasis-Open standard for digital signatures, a “blueprint” report from England and Wales on digital justice, and the Sweden judiciary exploring interactive decisions.

Courthouse Wi-Fi Access and New Tech Standards

An article last month in Government Technology magazine’s website titled “Court Calls for Wi-Fi to Comply with N.Y. Digital Evidence Rule” got me thinking that the world is probably changing in terms of courthouse Internet access.  The following post will list/discuss some of the court's policies and rules along with some new Wi-Fi standards that are being implemented.

LegalXML Electronic Court Filing 5.0 Standard Approved

OASIS is pleased to announce that Electronic Court Filing Version 5.0 (ECF) from the OASIS LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee [1] has been approved as an OASIS Committee Specification.  (ed note: the committee has been working on this for years BTW.)

ECF defines a technical architecture and a set of components, operations and message structures for an electronic court filing system, and sets forth rules governing its implementation. Version 5.0 provides a number of enhancements including:

25 Facts About AI & Law

Earlier this week I read the article “25 facts about AI & Law you always wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) by Micha Grupp at Medium.com.   I think it is an important article; and I want to post a summary and recommend that, if you are interested, read the entire article as it applied to the courts as well.

Mr. Grupp starts the article by stating:

“In law, AI is still all the talk. Most of it is slightly or utterly incorrect. Discoveries in recent years have little impact on the automation of legal work and the legal industry. Legal reasoning is different from other fields— technology should reflect this.”

I agree and so here is the very brief summary of the sections of his article.

Akoma Ntoso Naming Convention Adopted as an OASIS-Open Standard

Edited from a press release received on March 5, 2019.

The OASIS LegalXML LegalDocML Technical Committee has achieved adoption of Akoma Ntoso markup structure of use “of XML within a Parliaments', Assembly's or Congress' document management processes, within courts' and tribunals' judgment management systems, and generally in legal documents including contracts.”

eCourts 2018 Conference Session Videos Now Available

Roosevelt Sawyer, Chief Information Officer,
Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator

The video recordings for the great eCourts 2018 conference are now available for streaming here.

We are very pleased to be able to share the following list of excellent sessions below.

Council of Europe adopts first European Ethical Charter on the use of artificial intelligence in judicial systems

In a press release on December 4, 2018:

The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe has adopted the first European text setting out ethical principles relating to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in judicial systems.

The Charter provides a framework of principles that can guide policymakers, legislators and justice professionals when they grapple with the rapid development of AI in national judicial processes.

This and That in Court Technology – November 2018

Microsoft Surface Hub 2

With the “sold out” eCourts 2018 conference upon us, it is time to share news about the Best Legal Apps for 2018, the LegalXML Electronic Court Filing standards, the timing for Public Access to Civil Court Filings, another Judicial analytics tool, using GitHub for law text markup and access, and as you can see in the picture, a new Microsoft Surface Hub system.

GDPR Guidance and How to Market Your Court Website

The COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee has recently released two new resource bulletins.  Details below…

Policy Recommendations on Public Use of Cell Phones in the Courthouse

Thanks to our good friend Marc Lauritsen’s tweet, we learned of the following press release and report from the Massachusetts Appleseed Center for Law and Justice on the impact of banning cell phones in courthouses.  More below…

Industry Summit, September 17-18, 2018, in St. Petersburg, Florida

We received the following conference announcement today.

The annual Industry Summit is an opportunity for industry technology leaders to engage in free-flowing discussion with leaders of COSCA, NACM, and CITOC, and representatives from the IJIS Institute, NCSC, and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.  The objective of this two-day event is to provide the industry with insights into the current and emerging technology needs of the courts over the next two to six years.  Working side by side, court and industry technology leaders will identify business problems, brainstorm opportunities, and chart a course for future court technology.

Details below...

COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee Sets Priorities

In the recent committee meeting held in Atlanta, Georgia on July 22-23, 2018 the following priorities for 2018/2019 were set by the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee.  The subjects are:

This and That in Court Technology, May 2018

https://goo.gl/9BrHdZ

This month we learn about PatentBot, the new Oasis-Open LegalRuleML specification, some interesting thoughts on how to better replicate litigation service systems, Microsoft Research podcasts and free E-books, Oracle’s chatbot demonstration system, Notepad ++, and some graduation gift ideas.