We share some news and notes in this week’s CTB post. We note a speech-to-text AI demo video, text reminders, an event on transitioning your workforce back to the courthouse, yet another article on "Zoom courts", an NCSC Tiny Chat regarding court cell phone policy, and the NCSC website on pandemic response webinars that were recorded in 2020.
Earlier this month I was reading the opening day story about my Chicago Cubs baseball club and stumbled on the news that they have installed new AI-enhanced person scanning devices (pictured). The big benefit of this new technology is that one does not have to remove keys, mobile phone, or have your bag separately scanned. Great, right?
Details below...
My inbox received notices about three upcoming events that could be of interest to the court technology community. They are by Microsoft partner, Pythagoras in the UK; the Online Courtroom Project; and the latest in the World Justice Challenge 2021 competition. Additional details are listed below.
Microsoft announced an AI-powered live transcription service (AI we can use BTW) in Microsoft Teams, answering Zoom’s new feature. That got me thinking that they are not alone, as we share below...
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Via press release, March 16, 2021.
NIJ has released a four-part series on Artificial
Intelligence (AI) in the Criminal Justice System.
Through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, NIJ
has made available the following final technical reports (these reports are the
result of NIJ-funded projects but were not published by the U.S. Department
of Justice).
The third article in the series specifically discusses AI in the criminal courts.
Legal technology writer Molly McDonough posted an article about the Utah Outreach Court (https://twitter.com/saltlakejustice). That court takes a courtroom to the litigants, in some instances to the homeless person's campsite, using a repurposed mobile command center vehicle and tents.
Published by press release on March 4, 2021, in US Courts News
"Even as vaccines begin to protect the public from the coronavirus (COVID-19), one of the Judiciary’s biggest priorities is ensuring that the air inside courtrooms and hallways remains safe as courts schedule more in-person legal proceedings.
The Freakonomics website has a page that discusses the quote in the title of this post. It is
obviously appropriate for the courts in this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, but
I have used it in another context, when a new case, document, or e-filing
systems are being introduced into a court.
I explain below…
My friend Bob Ambrogi asked for comment during last Friday’s Legaltech Week Journalists’ Roundtable (an excellent discussion every week about our court customers). The discussion turned briefly to Jason Tashea's proposal via the DayOneProject.org initiative titled “Digitizing State Courts, Expanding Access to Justice”. The following is my partial reply to the question asked.
I applaud Mr. Tashea for thinking about the problem. But I think there is a lot more to consider and there are additional options? I explain…
Winter 2021
There is a massive amount of court technology news this month. We learned about, US Federal Courts response to the Covid-19 pandemic, conference news from the Innovating Justice 2021 and Legalweek 2021 events, California’s CourtStack initiative, Mark Beer’s upcoming talk on AI support for judicial decision making, Seattle and King County’s impact and response to the pandemic caseload, the NACM video podcast on Teleworking, and proposed USA federal government rules on digital format archiving.