15 Months

 

Abraham Lincoln as a young lawyer

Stating the obvious, since March 2020 we have seen massive changes in court and work/office organization and communications.  The pandemic forced changes to process, office, and data design that embrace the new virtual environment.  But first, we must discuss some pushback.

Protecting Judges with Avatars

A computer-generated image of a young woman

Here is the problem.  In some countries, judges face immediate physical danger every day.  Some projects have tried to use video conferencing to physically separate the judges from the criminal defendants to increase safety.  But, the root problem is the actual identity of the judges. Even where defendants are incarcerated in prisons or jails; if they are members of criminal families, or corrupt police, or military, their compatriots can potentially attack and even kill the judge and their families.

There is now a potential technical solution to this threat by using lifelike avatars in the video conference to protect the identity of the judge.  Now we aren’t suggesting cartoon-like avatars such as you find in video games or mobile phone apps.  We are suggesting the use of lifelike avatars that track a person’s facial features, eye movement, and dilation. Not surprising, because of their ownership of Oculus, Facebook is a tech leader here.  For an example of the work they are doing in this area see: https://youtu.be/86-tHA8F-zU

Sharing and Highlighting

We learned via an article and video report from KSAT television news in San Antonio, Texas titled “Enormous justice system gap closed, allowing courts to communicate better” about a new system in Bexar County, Texas to make “firearm bans now more visible to more judges”. 

A Court Robot Mashup Idea

Some of you might remember the 1970’s and 80’s USA television commercial for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup candy where the tagline was “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” 

I think I have a similar “mashup” idea for using robots in the courts.  I explain below.

Court Case Management Systems Part 20: User Interface (UI) and More

https://goo.gl/UGJioL

In this long-delayed edition in the Court Case Management Systems (CCMS) series, we will discuss some thoughts on user interfaces (UI) for court systems.  It is an exciting time to explore this area because the technology is developing quickly, and there are many new possibilities for developers to consider.  And because of all the new developments, this article has been delayed many times.

But it is summer time and so it is time to dive in...

Note: Previous work by our colleagues at the NCSC and other experts provides the list of functionality (the what). This CCMS series has been our attempt to describe “how” technologies have been and could be used in the courts.  

Click here for the previous posts in this series.

Graphical Association for Scheduling

Some of our long-time readers may notice that I am a fan of graphical displays to help to connect information and make things easier to understand.  And you might also remember that I have been testing the X.AI artificial intelligence scheduling assistant, Amy Ingram (but I found they also have Andrew).  This week I learned that they are testing a graphical reporting tool for their scheduling system.  Cool, I thought. More below...