Court Contingency Planning

As they say, stuff happens.  So it is very important that courts develop a contingency plan to keep operating as much as possible.

Our guest blogger, Steve Smith, Technology Services Supervisor of the 13th Circuit Court for Boone and Callaway counties in Missouri, shares what they have developed.

Even More This and That in Court Technology – June, 2016

After I wrote the post last week a lot of new items of potential interest to court technologists appeared.  In this edition we share news from Microsoft, Facebook, the ODR 2016 Conference, the Tyler Excellence Awards, uses for E-Discovery Software, and a cleaned up software utility repository.

This and That in Court Technology – Early Summer 2016

At the beginning of summer 2016, we share court technology news from the IACA European Regional Conference, Mississippi mobile access to justice app plans, online juror research restriction, Colorado online court information access questions, and a really big new computer monitor.

Events, Baseball, and Better Court Statistics

Cases are made up of events that can be counted in additional detail.  And those individual events have characteristics that can also be quantified.  In this article I will discuss these concepts with an apology up front that I will be using a lot of the game of Baseball analogies with apologies to my friends who follow the game of Cricket.  That said…

Talking About Change: Getting from One Trapeze to Another

Guest author, Doug Leonard writes about change in this interesting post.

"It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place between that we fear. It is like being between two trapezes. It’s like Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold onto."
                                        --- Marilyn Ferguson, American Futurist

Trusted Digital Signatures

Our good friend Patrick Cormier, former CEO of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology, now Vice President for Business Development at Notarius wrote a great piece on Digital Signatures that he has allowed us to re-post below.  I think you will find it interesting...

Another Technology to Plan For: Blockchain Contracts

As we all know, courts have to deal with contracts between parties.  And courts also very often have to verify the authenticity of information.

There is a lot of work going on using Blockchain database technology.  So it is time to learn about and plan for its use in the justice system.  We discuss below.

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.

A Response to Texas Criminal E-Filing Mandate Concerns

I received a link to an article in Texas Lawyer from our friend, new PhD Bill Raftery at Gavel to Gavel regarding a public hearing held on April 5, 2016 at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals regarding mandatory criminal case E-filing.  The article notes that the court has already made filing mandatory for their cases.  But they heard additional concerns that I will comment on:

Criminal Justice Identification in the Cloud

Courts have an unending problem with criminal defendant identification.  If one thinks about this issue for a minute, in many instances it is a benefit to the defendant to not be properly identified.  As most of you know, there have been biometric systems (fingerprint, face recognition for example) available for law enforcement, prosecutors, and courts for many years.  But there has been a significant initial cost barrier.  Last week I saw an interesting possible “cloud based” solution that may help.