Microsoft Mesh Augmented Reality for Courtroom Evidence

 

As most of you already know much of the "big technology news" for the first part of 2022 has been the announcements around "the metaverse".  

While it is fun in many gaming situations, I think there is also a possibility of using it effectively in courtroom evidence presentations in the future.  We discuss below how some versions might be useful in the courtroom.

This and That in Court Tech - January 2022

 

Image by Brad Stallcup https://stocksnap.io

This month we have news about Chromebook price drops, Trinidad and Tobago’s new court electronic practice directions, Illinois state courts new electronic device policy, a new ODR system provided by the Los Angeles County courts, the England and Wales judiciary taking a new data-driven strategy approach, an article on “How to Create Access-to-Justice Tech for Courts That People Will Actually Use” and the latest from our Tiny Chat team.

Minnesota Legal Kiosk Project

 

Thanks to a tweet from attorney Mark C. Palmer we learned today about this Minnesota project that started last year.

The project issued the following press release on May 3, 2021. 

Online Seminar: Tips for Conducting Remote and Hybrid Hearings with Self-represented Litigants

 

When? Thursday, January 20, 3:00 pm ET

Addressing the digital divide. Communicating scheduling changes. Providing legal information in layman’s terms on court websites. Managing the waiting room. Since the start of the pandemic, courts across the country have adapted their processes to allow for remote and virtual proceedings. Join us for the next discussion in a series of webinars focused on best practices for engaging with attorneys and self-represented litigants in remote and virtual hearings.

Prerecorded Videotaped Trials

 

With news that jury trials are being delayed once again due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is useful to resurrect some early court technology used by the Erie County Common Pleas Court, General Division in Sandusky, Ohio from the '70s and later.

The following is a report that my NCSC colleagues, Peggy A. Walsh and Kevin P. Kilpatrick, Staff Associate published as part of the Court Technology Reports, 1990 publication available in PDF in our Library eCollection here.

If you read this article, please remember that this was done in the time of analog (meaning tape) recording media and way before the internet was generally available to the public and the courts. It is much easier to accomplish this in 2022 and therefore the core concepts are worth considering and updating as another potential tool for court trials. 

Self-Help Information by the Courts in 2021

We were curious as to the status of online court help to the self-represented litigants as a good 2021 year-end wrapup article for the CTB?  We share what we found below.

In addition, we just learned of a new NIJ study on the use of Chatbots in the Criminal Justice System to add to our list of online helpers.  

Measuring Access to Justice

 

I stumbled across two outstanding articles on how to measure Access to Justice.  The first article is a summary posted on Medium.com by Ms. Rachel Wang that analyzes the second by Mr. Hugh McDonald UC Irvine Law Review article titled “Assessing Access to Justice: How Much “Legal” Do People Need and How Can We Know? 

In short, why has it taken this long to ask the questions posed in these articles?

New Tools to Use Documents as a Data Source

 

Continuing the general theme of earlier CTB articles here, here, and here on using documents as the database for context, analysis, and data entry; we saw an article from Infoworld.com today that lists tools by AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Document AI that “can parse your unstructured documents and produce structured information for all kinds of digital transformation use cases”.

Bankers Share Plans for Expanding Financial Services for Justice System Involved Persons

 

From "not the usual ABA (American Bar Association)" the courts normally hear from, it is good to know that the Bankers are thinking about the criminal justice system.  The American Bankers Association share via press release on November 10 2021 their new whitepaper.

Beam (my language) up, Simultaneous Interpretation Feature Added to Virtual Proceedings Platforms

Created by Yu luck, Noun Project

By Konstantina Vagenas, NCSC

At the onset of the pandemic, courts pivoted overnight to virtual hearings to comply with health and safety guidelines.  Court interpreters were required to provide their services remotely via court-approved and licensed videoconferencing platforms. Among these, WebEx and Zoom were the most common. The major challenge in these proceedings was the absence of an integrated, simultaneous interpretation channel, which interpreters overcame by adding an additional audio device, usually a personal mobile phone—a suboptimal solution.  Within a few weeks, the court interpreting world was abuzz with the advantages offered by Zoom’s embedded simultaneous court interpreting channels. Like characters in Star Trek, interpreters were being “beamed up” to virtual courtrooms.