Eight Rules of E-filing: Rule #8

Rule Number 8:  E-filing and “Paper on Demand”.  

E-filing (and more specifically electronic documents) provide flexibility in the ability for judges and staff to consume content.  A widely held view (see note 1 below) is that if the judge is better served by printing documents; they should be allowed to print the documents that are needed for the work at hand.  But when done working with those documents they are recycled and/or shredded.  They aren’t maintained as the official record.

CTC-2011 - What Did You See? (Updated -11/10/11)

Last week's Court Technology Conference (the 12th since 1984) was a gathering of court technology professionals, enthusiasts, and the curious in Long Beach, California.  Many of the conference presentations have already been made available at:

http://www.ctc2011.org/Attendees/Program-at-a-glance.aspx 
(Click on the session title to open a window with links to the presentation(s) if available).

I for one very much enjoyed Korean Judge Hoshin Won's presentation on tablet and surface computing including a tour of their e-Courts Experience Center.  A picture of a virtual courtroom concept demonstrating touch-screen and "tele-presence" technology in their e-Courts Experience Center is shown above.

A video of the e-Court Experience Hall and presentations are available at:

http://www.ctc2011.org/Attendees/CLCT-program.aspx

What did you see that you would like the CTB readers to know about?  We invite you to share your experiences by posting a comment below.

CTC-2011 Daily Update

For up-to-date information as to what is happening in Long Beach, California go to CTC Daily Update web page at: http://icmelearning.com/ctc/mailer/daily-update.html

Hope to say hi to many of you this week!

Eight Rules of E-Filing: Rule #7

E-Filing Should Support Government to Court Communications

The vast majority of E-filing systems focus upon civil case matters.  While there are many reasons I believe that besides vendor funding, this focus greatly reduces project political risk to the courts.  Judges have more discretion in managing civil cases and the parties can agree to work together to support new systems and procedures for everyone’s benefit.  In fact, this is how court E-filing started in 1990 in the Delaware Chancery Court.

But criminal and other cases involving human services and other government departments and programs are a different animal for E-filing.  In criminal cases the attorneys are continually looking for procedural mistakes and other errors in order dismiss cases and free or reduce the penalties for their clients.  In other words, the attorneys truly embrace their adversarial role with court procedures as well as the opposing side.  As a result, and along with funding challenges, there are only a handful of criminal case E-filing systems in the USA today.

Court Automation Funding Compilation Report

Our NCSC Technology Department's excellent summer intern and future law school student, Ms. Emily Whitaker, scoured the Internet and legal research resources to compile a list of state court automation funding. We can report that the majority of state courts have implemented some type of automation support fee or fund. The results were compiled into a PDF spreadsheet format and are available at:

http://www.ncsc.org/Services-and-Experts/Areas-of-expertise/Technology/2011-Technology-Survey-Results.aspx

US Federal Courts Train Judges Online

The August, 2011 edition of the US Federal Court's newsletter, The Third Branch, contains a brief article on their "Chambers Online Automation Training (COAT)" system.  The article states:


"The audio/video training modules fall into 13 general lesson areas. Few run longer than 10 minutes, many clock in at around 3 minutes. Each module is organized by job-related function and includes a demonstration and a guided simulation.


COAT began with a desire by the Judicial Conference Information Technology Committee to create better IT training for judges and chambers staff. It is part of the FJC/AO Judicial IT Training Initiative."

New Hampshire Issues E-Filing RFI

The New Hampshire Judicial Branch has issued an RFI for E-filing and related services.  A copy of the RFI can be obtained at:  http://admin.state.nh.us/purchasing/specRFP.asp?rfpID=6892

Eight Rules of E-Filing: Rule #6

E-Filing Must Support the Self-Represented

To date most court E-filing has focused on civil litigation for a number of reasons.  First, a majority of non-small-claims civil litigation is serviced by attorneys.  This well-educated user base is generally motivated to reduce their operational costs.  And with the use of E-filing in the USA Federal Courts being widespread, they are becoming very familiar with the technology.  But state courts in particular are increasingly experiencing a significant transition in case participants to more and more self-representation.  A recent compilation by the Knowledge and Information Services staff here at the NCSC reported that 66% of all cases heard in Minnesota courts involved the self-represented with a high of 81% of family cases.  And Connecticut reported a 101% increase in the number of civil cases involving self-represented from 2005 to 2010.

The Search for Quiet

Courtroom proceedings are an often intense environment during which one strains to hear every nuance of spoken communication.  And while there are many problems with courtroom acoustics, especially in large courtrooms, the tapping of keyboards can be disturbing.

In 2007 Judge Michael Marcus from the Circuit Court of Multnomah County Oregon shared his views on his quest for a quiet keyboard.  That quest continues to this day.  But as expected, there are two recent technology innovations that could be considered as a solution to this problem.

Eight Rules of E-Filing: Rule #5

Efficiency.  E-filing should facilitate more efficient court processes and decisions. 

First, once E-filing is implemented courts should re-engineered their rules and processes to take advantage of the new capabilities.  A good example is the court in Baltimore, Maryland that adjudicated thousands of asbestos matters.  The judge worked with the attorneys to group the electronic submissions 10 at a time containing identical facts (same shipyard, timeframe, and injury) and in turn modified the review presentation screen so that he could more quickly review and approve the civil settlement for the filers.