Lessons on Court Public Access

Margaret Hagan, Director of the Legal Design Lab at Stanford University, posted a terrific article that summarizes the results of their policy lab course this spring on “Community-Led System Design Practice”.  The entire article is enlightening.  I will highlight some findings I found particularly interesting below.

Court Component Model - A Modular Approach to Court Applications

You've likely already heard about the Court Component Model (CCM). If not, please take a look at this JTC Resource Bulletin. It provides a great introduction to the model.

The Court Component Model has garnered much attention in recent months from courts and solution providers alike. It provides a relatively simple way of looking at logical groupings of functional capabilities specific to a court business function. Each grouping of capabilities can be implemented as a component that operates independently of other components but integrates with them via well-defined, standards-based interfaces.

A “Fiscal New Year Eve” Purchase Suggestion

There are only a couple of days left in many of our court’s fiscal year budgets.  So, for IT departments that sometimes mean a small "spending spree" to use the allocated funds.  I would like to suggest a small purchase that will benefit your computer video/audio communications setup.

This and That in Court Technology – June 2018

https://www.lawhelp.org/DC/

News about a national list of self-help court and public websites, lots of news about the upcoming E-Courts Conference, and tips for dealing with your email inbox.

Deleting Court Data

Recently I shared my opinion on a conference call that court IT systems (CMS/EDMS/E-filing) should not allow deletion of any data.  I explain below.

JTC Technology Update Webinar

The next National Association for Court Management webinar will be an update on the projects of the Joint Technology Committee. 

Court Administrators and Joint Technology Committee Co-chairs David Slayton and Kevin Bowling will give an update on the committee’s projects which include blockchain technology, cyber-security, redaction and many more.  These types of projects tend to set the agenda for court technology in the US for the next 5 years. 

The presentation will be made on Thursday, July 12, 2018, from 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM EDT

Digital Evidence Collection Standards

In the “missed an announcement in December category”, the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) released federated testing tools that are “designed to help law enforcement and forensic practitioners”…”in making a copy of the data from a seized electronic device”.

Since courts deal with evidence, we need to discuss this below…

This and That in Court Technology, May 2018

https://goo.gl/9BrHdZ

This month we learn about PatentBot, the new Oasis-Open LegalRuleML specification, some interesting thoughts on how to better replicate litigation service systems, Microsoft Research podcasts and free E-books, Oracle’s chatbot demonstration system, Notepad ++, and some graduation gift ideas.

Answering the Phone, with AI

I have often said that one of my goals in court automation was to be able to enable courts to “answer the phone”.  Many years ago, I was called by an elected clerk of court from a large metropolitan county.  Unfortunately, they did not leave a direct telephone number but rather, their general office number.  I tried to return the call and their automated answering system put me on hold.  I thought it was an important call to try to return and waited for over a half-hour.  Their system then disconnected me.  Frustration for me but it would have been worse to have business with this office.  So, when I saw the Google Duplex AI System demo, I became very interested.

Names are Complicated

For court systems, who must deal with persons from all the wonderful cultures from around the world, as well as corporations and other legal entities, how names are captured and displayed in the case and document management systems can be a challenge.  We discuss below.