This and That in Court Tech - July 2019

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This month’s summer basket of Court Technology news includes the CTC 2019 agenda announcement, Arizona’s new eAccess Online Portal, a note on savings created by the use of the Florida E-Filing Portal, an award for the Pennsylvania Court Guardianship technology program, a report for the England and Wales courts on legal technology, and a tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office 365’s e-discovery tools.

Virginia Public Access to Court Records Grows

Virginia State Capitol buildings

Thanks to some articles on Medium.com we learned that the Virginia courts have opened court records to online access and bulk download last week.  This follows years of litigation from news media organizations that resulted in a Virginia Supreme Court ruling in 2017 denying access.  However, in the interim political pressure resulted in first the Virginia Supreme Court announced on January 23, 2018, that they would “promulgate a court rule concerning public access to judiciary records on or before December 1, 2018, and later legislation requiring that “bulk data” be made available.

Free Security Awareness Kit

With the news of the Georgia Administrative Office of the Court's ransomware attack, I thought that it would be best to pass along Brian Krebs message about the free security awareness campaign for your staff.  You can access the Information Security Institute (InfoSec) “Marine Lowlifes Campaign Kit” (get it… dangerous phish?) here. 

There is also an introduction video to view to see what they are providing.  Be safe.

US Federal Judiciary Creates Public User Group for PACER

Via press release on June 26, 2019: The Federal Judiciary has created and is seeking members for a public user group to provide advice and feedback on ways to improve its electronic public access services. The Electronic Public Access (EPA) Public User Group membership will be selected from interested applicants who represent the legal sector, media, academia, government agencies, the public, and other entities that use the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system to access federal court records. The group will allow for the exchange of information about issues experienced by users, and it will recommend ideas for expanding and improving services.

“AI” in Justice Systems

We heard about a new program that the San Francisco, California District Attorney is developing a program to attempt to reduce racial bias. That and another article on “AI Hype” and other AI development projects are in this week’s post.

This and That in Court Tech and CTC Announcement – June 2019

We are pleased to share that renowned author Richard Susskind will be the keynote speaker at the CTC 2019 Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 10, 2019.  That and news about the New Mexico OneSource system, an upcoming podcast by my colleagues on blockchain, a “Jury Bot” system, a call for judicial technical competence, and my experience with the latest Windows 10 feature update, are in this month’s compilation of tech news.

Virus attack takes down court – what can be done?

We learned that the Philadelphia courts and their E-filing system have been brought down with a computer virus attack.  And the attack has not resulted in a data breach or ransomware installation (unlike Baltimore City government). 

We wish them the best for a complete recovery and want to share some thoughts on how one might prepare and recover from this problem.

E-Filing Gets Serious in New Jersey

Photo: Andreas Praefcke [CC BY 3.0 ]

We learned from a Law.com article that the New Jersey Appellate Court had affirmed an order enforcing an arbitration award after the plaintiff’s lawyer “failed to use New Jersey’s eCourts system to electronically file its demand for a trial de novo and to pay the filing fee”.  Discussion follows below.

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: