See You in Seattle!

Please come by the National Center for State Courts booth at CTC9 and say "Hi!" We are always happy to see our friends in the court community. There will be information about the various technology programs and initiatives plus a free NCSC Research and Technology CD packed with useful information such as the State Court Guide to Statistical Reporting and the first complete Global Information Exchange Package Documentation for Traffic Citations. See you in Seattle!

ABA Responds to the Aftermath of Katrina

From our friend Larry Smith at the American Bar Association:

The American Bar Association is coordinating with FEMA to provide resources, and will serve as a clearinghouse for lawyers and those in the legal profession who are willing to volunteer, either generally or specifically for law firm clients and for the firms themselves. This week, we (the ABA Law Practice Management Section and others) are also gathering resources that we have previously published on practice interruption/continuation and disaster recovery for the benefit of those practices that cannot continue. These resources will be published both at the LPM and ABA-wide pages, linked through the ABA Web site at www.abanet.org. We continue to field inquiries on these topics. If any of you have materials that you believe are appropriate for this effort, we encourage you to share them.

Thanks,
Larry C. Smith, Director
Law Practice Management Section
American Bar Association
E-mail: SmithL@staff.abanet.org
Phone: 312-988-5661
Web: www.lawpractice.org

Wireless in the Courtroom

Submitted by Hon. Kenneth L. Fields, Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County

In mid 2004 the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County (Phoenix), decided to experiment with wireless service for the parties and counsel in four of its electronic courtrooms. The Court, working with County administration, installed the necessary equipment, developed the necessary protocols and initiated the service in early 2005.

At the present time it is offered as a free service for any attorney, party, witness or spectator on the 4th floor of the East Court Building. The comments from counsel are positive. The ability to have wireless support has lead to many new ideas for litigation support in the Courtroom. Examples are to have your expert available via instant messaging to support your cross examination while the opposing party is presenting its case or having the ability to locate missing documents at the last minute and forwarding them to you while the trial is on-going. Another recent use was to have a witness testifying telephonically coast to coast while the paralegals were sending him copies of exhibits as an e-mail attachment to be viewed during the examination. The costs saving were significant when one considered the alternative of video broadcasting or conferencing the testimony.

The use of wireless is just starting to catch on with the more adept attorneys and is expected to be a routine request in larger trials. For more information, contact Eric Ciminski at ciminskie@superiorcourt.maricopa.gov.

CTC9 Justice Integration Net

New at CTC9, the Justice Integration Net, sponsored by Microsoft Corporation and powered by SAIC, will demonstrate how a jurisdiction can quickly realize the benefits of an integrated justice system. As many court technology experts know, criminal justice integration has been a difficult and expensive enterprise. In addition, issues such as security, authentication and trust have been significant barriers. The Justice Integration Net demonstration will incorporate all of the technologies and components you expect - XML, middleware, digital signatures, speech recognition, and more - and present a framework for evolving standards and solutions, all in a compact demonstration venue adjacent to the NCSC Pavilion in booth number 435. The CTC9 Justice Integration Net will also demonstrate what is possible in integration today using off-the-shelf software and hardware. Presentations will be made on the half-hour for most of the first day and on the hour on the second day of the exhibition.

NCSC Jur-E Bulletin Warning on Identity Theft

The August 5, 2005 edition of the NCSC's Center for Jury Studies Jur-E Bulletin contained the announcement on the latest identity theft scam.

Identity Theft Alert: Courts Beware

It seems that the latest target for those in the identity theft business is the jury system, as Jur-E was made aware of two separate cases this week in which jury programs were being used as a vehicle for obtaining individuals' personal information.

First, in Maricopa County, Arizona, citizens have been the targets of phone calls from individuals claiming to be court officials. These occurrences have drastically increased over the past month. Often, the individual claiming to be an agent of the court indicated that the phone call was in regards to jury service, issuing harsh threats regarding failure to appear and requesting personal information for "verification purposes."

Maricopa County was made aware of the problem when citizens called the court directly to question the validity of the calls, and to complain about the treatment they had received from the individuals posing as court staff. The court reacted swiftly, issuing a statement to the press emphasizing that the court would never request personal information over the phone, and also providing warning signs to prevent identity theft and fraud over the phone. In the press release, the court emphasized that they did not contact individuals over the phone regarding jury duty at any time.

A similar scam was reported in Thurston County, Washington. Again, a resident called the court to report that a man, claiming to be a court official, had called her at home regarding her "failure to appear at jury service." The caller pressed the woman for her Social Security number, name, and date of birth. The court emphasized in their statement to the press that they would never request such information over the phone.

Both of these cases should serve as notification to courts around the country that this type of fraud may be on the rise. Jur-E has heard of other similar cases over the course of the past year, but it seems as though they are increasing in frequency. In both cases in question, courts responded quickly to the claims and made public their policies regarding jury duty and non-response follow-up. This case further emphasizes the importance of jury managers maintaining communication with the general public. See our NCSC KIS department's page on trends in identity theft for more information.

Chris Caposella to be CTC9 Keynoter

One of the presentations that I am most looking forward to at CTC9 is Wednesday morning's keynote address by Chris Capossela of Microsoft. He is currently the Corporate Vice President, Information Worker Product Management Group, which means he is in charge of the new version of Microsoft Office. Because this software is such an overwhelming standard in business and government, any change to this technology is significant. The new version of Office completely embraces the use of XML technology as an integral part of the software. Because of the possibilities such as easier integration between documents and court case management databases, I am very much looking forward to his talk.

PDF for Lawyers Web Site

Wandering around the web today I found a blog called PDF for Lawyers. It has good information generally about PDF files and has links to information about digital signatures, scanners for lawyers, and, most interesting, PDF redaction

Federal Judicial Center Weighted Caseload Study

While doing some work last week I stumbled upon the Federal Judicial Center's Weighted Caseload Study web page. This study was the first to use the courts automated case management system to compile event information from over 297,000 cases. The entire report and more importantly, documents relating to the methodology are posted.

NCSC Court Technology Survey

The National Center for State Courts needs your help. In preparation for the Ninth Court Technology Conference and to provide information directly to you for use in CITOC, we ask that you participate in our first comprehensive online court technology survey. As you know, technology has had a significant impact upon court operations and organization during the past decade. But there has not been a comprehensive survey to determine which and where courts have made these changes.

Our aim is to collect this information this summer, analyze it, and make it available at CTC9 and shortly thereafter online. The survey is self-compiling and so we will be able to make the full raw data set available. We believe that the subsequent report will provide you with a resource as to what courts are investing in technology. Hopefully this will assist you in connecting with courts with similar technology and plans for the future.

For those of you who are on statewide court systems, please note that your state CIO/IT director has previously been contacted. However, we still need information about your courtroom and related technology implementations.

The survey will take approximately 30-40 minutes to complete. If you wish to download a complete copy of the survey in preparation (advised), a PDF version is available.

(The online survey is no longer available.)

If you should have any questions, please feel free to contact Jim McMillan at the National Center for State Courts at jmcmillan@ncsc.dni.us

Israel's New Court Automation System

Microsoft has posted a white paper and slide show on Israel's new court automation program. They write: "the Israeli Court House Management is replacing the manual administration of hardcopy documents used by Israel's courts with a paperless system. Electronic versions of all documents submitted to and issued by the courts will be created using optical character recognition (OCR). Known as the Next Generation Court System (NGCS), the solution will allow lawyers and the public to research case documents 24 hours a day."