This and That in Court Technology – Late February 2016

A lot of news to share in this edition of our regular roundup of news and events.  We learned about Bots in the UK Courts, a new NCSC Report on Body Worn Cameras and the Courts, an Court Technology Director job opening in Seattle, Washington, Ravel Law judicial analytic services expansion, CenturyLink's new governmental cloud service, Microsoft "Plumbago", Pennsylvania Courts online payment system performance for 2015, and what the deal is with Windows 10 "telemetry" reporting.

Judges Leverage Full-Text Searching

We are happy to share a guest post from Ms. Jenny Bunch of Mentis Technology Solutions on how judges are finding the benefits of full-text search in their aiSmartBench (E-Bench) system.

Watson Law

An article about a talk by Ms. Kyla Moran, IBM senior consultant with the Watson Industry Leadership group at a Legal Futures Annual Conference in London, England has me thinking…

An Interview with TestNotice’s John Coggeshall

From time to time we here at the CTB want to make our readers aware of new products and services. In this post we talk with John Coggeshall, Co-Founder of TestNotice that provides notification services for drug and problem solving courts.  The service also has other potential uses.

This and That in Court Technology – October, 2015

News about CourtHack, a new judge research tool for lawyers, the FBI’s NextGen identification system, online digital record preservation classes, a new high-speed departmental scanner, and just what everyone needs: a “Flux Capacitor” for your car.

Courts are reinventing for the 21st Century

A guest post by Judge Dawn Kilda, 74th District Court in Bay County, Michigan.on how technology implementation benefits her court.

This and That in Court Technology – September, 2015

This month we have news and notes about a crowdsourcing funding project, advances in artificial intelligence powered speech recognition, criminal case E-filing in Illinois, some comments about the new Apple's iPad Pro and Pencil, a new tiny cheap computer, IBM pitches Watson to trial lawyers, solar windows, and cleaning your gadgets.

Upcoming JTC Webinar on eBench and Judicial Tools

The Joint Technology Committee (JTC) of COSCA, NACM and the NCSC will host a webinar on Thursday, August 20, 2015 at 2:00pm EDT.  The topic will be "eBench and Dashboards – Making a Case for Judicial Tools".

Fantastical – A Natural Language Calendar App

At the beginning of 2015 we (not so boldly) predicted that this was the year that we would see applications that use a more natural interface such as speech and pen input.  Here is one cool new program that could guide our CCMS development plans.

New JTC paper makes case for judicial tools

Judicial Dashboard screenshot, courtesy Wisconsin Court System

The Joint Technology Committee (JTC) has released a new resource bulletin, “Making the Case for Judicial Tools.”

Electronic Briefs Explained

Probate Court Judge Don Wilkes,
Ms. Lisa Joyner and Ms. Kristie Pope
Candler Co., Georgia

Attorney Ms. Elizabeth “Ellie” Neiberger wrote a terrific article for the Florida Law Journal (February, 2015 Volume 89, No. 2, page 46) titled “Judge-Friendly Briefs in the Electronic Age”.  She starts the article with the advice “(t)he golden rule for any type of writing is ‘write for the reader’.  Appellate judges read a lot, and how they read is changing.”

2014 CITOC Innovation Award – North Carolina Electronic Protective Order System

The following article provides some of the project details for the CITOC award winner submitted by the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts.  In their submission they wrote that:

“On June 24, 2013, Alamance County became the first county in North Carolina to implement the Electronic Protective Order System (EPOS) which greatly increases the safety of domestic violence victims and allows for streamlined, efficient processing of domestic violence orders initiated from a secure, non-public remote location.

The Hagan Manifesto on PDF's

Used with permission from Ms. Hagan

Our favorite Law Design blogger, Ms. Margaret Hagan, has posted her “short manifesto” on “Law’s PDF Problem”.  I agree with her observations and offer some additional commentary.

Ms. Hagan is doing some excellent work in examining how legal systems have been designed (or not designed) over the past few years.  Her recent post looks at the problem of legal (including court) information being “buried in PDF’s”.  She notes:

The Courtroom Tablet - Microsoft Surface Hub

 

Image from Microsoft

One of the most interesting thing that was announced by Microsoft earlier this week was the Surface Hub 84-inch 4K interactive display (there will be a 55” size also).  Talk about a tablet!  This is one device that has the potential for everyone in the courtroom to see and use. 

This article from Engadget.com describes the systems features.  It includes a the pressure sensitive stylus that allows the user to change colors and line thickness, built-in cameras with Skype for Business video and desktop conferencing, and the ability to wirelessly connect with any “Miracast-enabled device” so that when Windows10 is released, one will be able to download images from the screen to save for archive/evidence.

It was reported that it will be available later in 2015.

2015 – The Year We Can Talk about Using Automation the Way Judges (and People) Actually Work

Lenovo Yoga AnyPen

Apologies for the long title, but it is becoming clear that automation has finally caught up to the way judges actually work, by speaking and writing with a pen.

Cloud Based Adobe Connect Integration with EchoSign

Courts looking for a combined video and electronic signature solution for warrants and similar communications can now look to Adobe for a possible solution.

Some Thoughts on Electronic Document Navigation

Many times I hear that electronic documents are too hard to work with.  In this article we explore some ideas to help address this perceived and real problem.

E-Filing, E-Service News and More – July, 2014

Thanks to the LinkedIn e-Filing/e-Service of Court Documents group we learned about some new activities in this area.

Three Interesting Things

This week we share some interesting ideas that have come to our attention on Pennsylvania’s new online Dependency Benchbook, an online support calculator, and how to publish Internet Calendars with Microsoft Office Outlook.

This and That in Court Tech – July, 2014

Here is the hot and humid mid-summer news from the world of Court Tech.  We have notes about online and in-person training, courtroom technology bench configurations, New Hampshire chooses an E-filing vendor, CITOC, and an online multilingual dictionary that includes legal terms.