McMillan Court Technology Conference Scholarship Available

Jose Lezcano, 2017 winner and Jim McMillan

The National Center for State Courts is pleased to announce a call for applications for the James E. McMillan Award (McMillan Award) for Innovation in Court Technology. The winner, selected by a committee of court technology experts, will receive a full scholarship to attend CTC 2019 in New Orleans, LA, September 10-12, 2019. This full scholarship includes a waiver of conference registration, four nights accommodation at a conference hotel, and round-trip travel expenses. The approximate value of this scholarship is $2,000.

The web page with full details is available at: https://courttechnologyconference.org/ctc-2019-scholarship-award-announcement/

The due date for submission is Monday, June 17, 2019.

Please Fix Your MS Word Court Forms

Warning, old guy (get off my lawn) rant follows...  Many of the Microsoft Word forms courts provide on their websites ARE NOT real forms.  The thing that makes me especially crazy is when one enters data on the line provided … the line extends/wraps.  Then I have to waste time to shorten the line and re-underline what I typed.  That said, we share what we think that courts should be doing below.

Farewell to Richard Zorza and More Court Tech News

We have sad news regarding the passing of access to justice pioneer, Richard Zorza as well as news from the Ninth Judicial Circuit in Orange County/Orlando Florida, more online services announce by the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal, some notes on courtroom technology and the Microsoft Surface Hub 2S.

25 Facts About AI & Law

Earlier this week I read the article “25 facts about AI & Law you always wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) by Micha Grupp at Medium.com.   I think it is an important article; and I want to post a summary and recommend that, if you are interested, read the entire article as it applied to the courts as well.

Mr. Grupp starts the article by stating:

“In law, AI is still all the talk. Most of it is slightly or utterly incorrect. Discoveries in recent years have little impact on the automation of legal work and the legal industry. Legal reasoning is different from other fields— technology should reflect this.”

I agree and so here is the very brief summary of the sections of his article.

CCMS Audit Mode...

Our good friend and former NCSC colleague, Larry Webster says that caseflow management is akin to a leaf in a stream.  Sometimes the leaf is caught by the current and moves quickly.  Other times the leaf is caught by a tree-branch or gets stuck against the bank. 

Court case management systems (CCMS) exist to control and oversee the processing and flow of the matters brought before the court.  To achieve this goal, and to guide policy, we use the CCMS to create court statistical reports.  But we need to ask more from these statistical reports.  We explain below:

What Went Wrong? - A New Court Metric?

Many years and many, many pounds ago I was a competitive distance runner.  I always thought this was good training for work with courts because one can practice for years and only maybe achieve a good result.  I still generally follow training ideas and athletics (running) as a sport.  One of those coach/writers is the excellently named Greg McMillan who writes a blog at https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/. 

Last week he posted an article on how an athlete should analyze a poor performance by creating a “what went wrong log” which has a simple spreadsheet structure.  Taking this general concept, I very much like the idea of studying “what went wrong” for the courts.  Let me explain.

Calling Alexa at Glendale Arizona City Court

Amazon Echo Dot

Long-time readers of this blog may remember that one of my general goals as a court technologist has been to enable courts to “answer the phone”.  David Garretson wrote to share an online streaming video demonstrating the Alexa voice app they built for the Glendale Arizona Municipal Court.

Some Court Tech News and Notes – March 2019

https://www.neworleans.com/

This month we share some notes about CTC-2019, Connecticut Probate Court E-filing, a great blockchain article, transcription in Africa, text messaging programs, and some both bad and interesting England & Wales Court IT news. 

Akoma Ntoso Naming Convention Adopted as an OASIS-Open Standard

Edited from a press release received on March 5, 2019.

The OASIS LegalXML LegalDocML Technical Committee has achieved adoption of Akoma Ntoso markup structure of use “of XML within a Parliaments', Assembly's or Congress' document management processes, within courts' and tribunals' judgment management systems, and generally in legal documents including contracts.”

CTC 2019 Call for Proposals

We want to hear from you! The Court Technology Conference will feature multiple education tracks providing opportunities to learn about practical applications of technology and innovation in several topic areas. We are reaching out to the court community for session ideas that encourage teams of administrators, technologists, and judges to attend the conference. 

The deadline is March 15, 2019.