Improving-Child-Support-Enforcement Outcomes with ODR in Michigan

https://www.miottawa.org/aboutottawa.htm

Our NCSC KIS group recently posted one of our "Trends" articles by Kevin Bowling and Jannell Challa of the Michigan 20th Circuit Court along with NCSC colleague, Di Graski on how ODR facilitated communications to improve child support outcomes for the participants and the court (PDF).  Please read more about this significant achievement below:

Punchline – Google Edition – And an Idea

This is a short note today due to travel regarding a CBS News report titled “CBS News investigation finds fraudulent court orders used to change Google search results” from July 25, 2019.  The report explained that:

“A Google search can reveal negative information about anyone or any company. Since it's difficult to change those results, many small businesses are paying thousands to so-called reputation management companies to make negative web pages disappear.”

They further explained:

“One of the only ways to get Google to permanently remove a link from its search results is with a court order from a judge. CBS News sorted through thousands of these court orders and spotted small businesses from all across America trying to clean up their reputations. But we also spotted a problem: Dozens of the court documents were fakes.”

If you get a chance to watch the video it shows that the fraudsters simply cut and pasted images of the court stamps and judges signatures.  Thus here is yet another example of how the authentication method of signatures and blue rubber stamps is outdated. 

We have posted many articles on this type of problem before. But, I want to offer another idea?  Why not set up a new “verified electronic copy” service with fees that Google and others could pay to the court to receive a verified copy … with ideally an electronic signature.  The fee would very likely be passed along by Google to the persons/companies who legitimately should have their web page/link removed.  And of course, the fee rule could allow for the court to issue a waver.

So accurate information, problems for the fraudsters, and fee to help courts pay for the service.  What’s not to like?

This and That in Court Tech - July 2019

http://bit.ly/2O0gxGA

This month’s summer basket of Court Technology news includes the CTC 2019 agenda announcement, Arizona’s new eAccess Online Portal, a note on savings created by the use of the Florida E-Filing Portal, an award for the Pennsylvania Court Guardianship technology program, a report for the England and Wales courts on legal technology, and a tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office 365’s e-discovery tools.

Virginia Public Access to Court Records Grows

Virginia State Capitol buildings

Thanks to some articles on Medium.com we learned that the Virginia courts have opened court records to online access and bulk download last week.  This follows years of litigation from news media organizations that resulted in a Virginia Supreme Court ruling in 2017 denying access.  However, in the interim political pressure resulted in first the Virginia Supreme Court announced on January 23, 2018, that they would “promulgate a court rule concerning public access to judiciary records on or before December 1, 2018, and later legislation requiring that “bulk data” be made available.

Free Security Awareness Kit

With the news of the Georgia Administrative Office of the Court's ransomware attack, I thought that it would be best to pass along Brian Krebs message about the free security awareness campaign for your staff.  You can access the Information Security Institute (InfoSec) “Marine Lowlifes Campaign Kit” (get it… dangerous phish?) here. 

There is also an introduction video to view to see what they are providing.  Be safe.

US Federal Judiciary Creates Public User Group for PACER

Via press release on June 26, 2019: The Federal Judiciary has created and is seeking members for a public user group to provide advice and feedback on ways to improve its electronic public access services. The Electronic Public Access (EPA) Public User Group membership will be selected from interested applicants who represent the legal sector, media, academia, government agencies, the public, and other entities that use the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system to access federal court records. The group will allow for the exchange of information about issues experienced by users, and it will recommend ideas for expanding and improving services.

“AI” in Justice Systems

We heard about a new program that the San Francisco, California District Attorney is developing a program to attempt to reduce racial bias. That and another article on “AI Hype” and other AI development projects are in this week’s post.

This and That in Court Tech and CTC Announcement – June 2019

We are pleased to share that renowned author Richard Susskind will be the keynote speaker at the CTC 2019 Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 10, 2019.  That and news about the New Mexico OneSource system, an upcoming podcast by my colleagues on blockchain, a “Jury Bot” system, a call for judicial technical competence, and my experience with the latest Windows 10 feature update, are in this month’s compilation of tech news.

Virus attack takes down court – what can be done?

We learned that the Philadelphia courts and their E-filing system have been brought down with a computer virus attack.  And the attack has not resulted in a data breach or ransomware installation (unlike Baltimore City government). 

We wish them the best for a complete recovery and want to share some thoughts on how one might prepare and recover from this problem.

E-Filing Gets Serious in New Jersey

Photo: Andreas Praefcke [CC BY 3.0 ]

We learned from a Law.com article that the New Jersey Appellate Court had affirmed an order enforcing an arbitration award after the plaintiff’s lawyer “failed to use New Jersey’s eCourts system to electronically file its demand for a trial de novo and to pay the filing fee”.  Discussion follows below.

Courthouse Wi-Fi Access and New Tech Standards

An article last month in Government Technology magazine’s website titled “Court Calls for Wi-Fi to Comply with N.Y. Digital Evidence Rule” got me thinking that the world is probably changing in terms of courthouse Internet access.  The following post will list/discuss some of the court's policies and rules along with some new Wi-Fi standards that are being implemented.

LegalXML Electronic Court Filing 5.0 Standard Approved

OASIS is pleased to announce that Electronic Court Filing Version 5.0 (ECF) from the OASIS LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee [1] has been approved as an OASIS Committee Specification.  (ed note: the committee has been working on this for years BTW.)

ECF defines a technical architecture and a set of components, operations and message structures for an electronic court filing system, and sets forth rules governing its implementation. Version 5.0 provides a number of enhancements including:

A Barrel Full of Court Tech News

It is spring flower season and so we share an analogous bounty of court tech in the following post.  Included are news about CTC registration, more reminder systems benefits, New Mexico's new open legal online access system, China court blockchain, and AI projects, Amal and George Clooney's TrialWatch app, Kansas Supreme Court's E-Filing rules review, and paper savings in the England and Wales courts.

Bob Roper

We have some sad news to share in this post.  Our good friend and former NCSC colleague, Bob Roper has passed.  The following notes are from friends who wish to share their stories about this true court technology pioneer.

From O. John Kuenhold:

Bob served as CIO of the Colorado Courts from 1992 until he resigned in September 2011. Bob’s leadership and vision initiated the long transition of the Branch into the world of electronic files, filing and the continuing development of a next-gen case management system. Bob was a founding member of CITOC and served for a decade on the COSCA-NACM Joint Technology Committee of the National Center for State Courts where he championed the role of technology in improving the quality of service to the public by the courts. Bob was a frequent presenter and panelist at the NCSC Court Technology Conferences E-Courts Conferences for 20 years.

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.

Comic Book Contracts

https://creative-contracts.com/

At the recent Innovating Justice Forum, I had the great honor of meeting South African lawyer Robert de Rooy who created the idea of Comic Book Contracts to allow “an illiterate person to understand their” employment contract.  While this is a technology blog, this is such a powerful idea I had to share it with our readers to think about in regard to both paper and online agreement systems.  More below…

This and That in Court Tech – February 2019

https://goo.gl/NZgsos

This month we write about legislative support for court notification systems, BC’s new ODR system, a thought piece on AI helping to overcome judicial bias, a new Florida Bar natural language AI system, an ABA report on technology for non-lawyers, and an interesting report on understanding justice needs.

Court Technology Conference 2019

Registration for CTC 2019 to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana from September 10-12, 2019 is now open. Register now and you get the Early Bird rate.

NCSC’s Court Technology Conference (CTC) is the largest court technology conference in the world. Sign up now to join more than 1,500 court professionals in New Orleans for three days of learning, training, and networking at one of the most advanced court technology exhibit shows.

ODR Forum 2019-Call for Presentations

Are you an Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) professional or academic? Are you part of an organization that utilizes ODR? Do you design, develop, or implement ODR solutions? Do you study and measure ODR? The International ODR Forum 2019 to be held in Williamsburg, Virginia on October 29-30, 2019 needs you!

18 Ways Courts Should Use Technology to Better Serve their Customers

Back in October 2018, we see that our good friend and former NCSC colleague, John Greacen released the above-titled report issued by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver.  We briefly summarize below…

Multi-Use Jury Assembly Rooms?

https://allaccesssys.com/jury-assembly-rooms/ 

For many years we have looked for ways to be able to “reuse jury assembly rooms”. Many jury assembly rooms consume a significant floorspace in courthouses simply because they need to be able to seat large numbers of persons at one time.  But the seating requirement is often only needed a few times per week or even per month.  Therefore, we have looked for ways to be able to easily divide these large spaces so that they can be used for other purposes.  A possible solution to the “dividing room problem” presented itself when I saw the Skyfold system.  n this post, I want to share some ideas as to how one might be able to apply it to your current or new courthouse.

This and That in Court Tech – January 2019

In this edition, we share information about a new court use of social media report, mobile video conferencing and identity verification, Connecticut Probate Court E-Filing, digital blockchain marriage certificates, an excellent self-help center website, and an upcoming conference.

eCourts 2018 Conference Session Videos Now Available

Roosevelt Sawyer, Chief Information Officer,
Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator

The video recordings for the great eCourts 2018 conference are now available for streaming here.

We are very pleased to be able to share the following list of excellent sessions below.

A Court Robot Mashup Idea

Some of you might remember the 1970’s and 80’s USA television commercial for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup candy where the tagline was “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” 

I think I have a similar “mashup” idea for using robots in the courts.  I explain below.

NCSC Announces the ODR Industry Summit

The ODR Industry Summit is an opportunity for technology leaders to engage in free-flowing discussion with court leaders from across the United States from March 4-5, 2019 in Denver, Colorado

The objective of this day and a half event is to provide the industry with insights on the current and emerging ODR needs of the courts over the next several years. Working side by side, court and industry technology leaders will identify business problems, brainstorm opportunities, and chart a course for future ODR use in the courts. 

Registration for this event is complimentary.

Airfare assistance may be available for international firms interested in entering the US market.

The full conference announcement (PDF) with location and hotel details is available here.

Georgia Issues RFI for an ADR Module

The Georgia Commission on Dispute Resolution has released an RFI an alternative dispute resolution module.

The ADR Module RFI is a state and local partnership between JC/AOC and the Commission created to achieve optimal pricing for replacement technology software which does not exist or has reached its end of life.

A Few eCourts 2018 Highlights

We are back from the eCourts 2018 Conference held last week in Las Vegas.  There were many great educational sessions and, I will share below some of the ones that I found interesting.  But also, please note that all the sessions were video recorded.  The NCSC team is working to put them online. I will write a note here when they are available.  So here goes…

eCourts 2018 Preview Podcast

ImageSoft interviewed our own Vice President, Jesse Rutledge for their Paperless Process Podcast earlier this week.  They write:

We had the opportunity to pull Jesse away from his own podcast for a bit of our own “court talk” about all things eCourts 2018, including the hot-button “rebooting justice” discussion, the component model, the evolution of the eCourts conference, and how to join the eCourts conversations even if you can’t attend. This is a can’t-miss episode for anyone with their thumb on the pulse of our nation’s court system.

Click here to navigate to the podcast web page.

Council of Europe adopts first European Ethical Charter on the use of artificial intelligence in judicial systems

In a press release on December 4, 2018:

The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe has adopted the first European text setting out ethical principles relating to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in judicial systems.

The Charter provides a framework of principles that can guide policymakers, legislators and justice professionals when they grapple with the rapid development of AI in national judicial processes.

This and That in Court Technology – November 2018

Microsoft Surface Hub 2

With the “sold out” eCourts 2018 conference upon us, it is time to share news about the Best Legal Apps for 2018, the LegalXML Electronic Court Filing standards, the timing for Public Access to Civil Court Filings, another Judicial analytics tool, using GitHub for law text markup and access, and as you can see in the picture, a new Microsoft Surface Hub system.

Plain Language Forms Implemented by the Abu Dhabi Courts

Abu Dhabi Courthouses

We heard late last month from our friend, Mohamed Hesham Elrafei of the Abu Dhabi Courts about their new initiative with plan language forms and documents.  He writes and credits several contributors to the ideas they used in their new applications.  He writes:

How not to do it: Videoconferencing Edition

I had the great pleasure of participating in a group study meeting on the use of videoconferencing (aka telepresence) in the justice system this past week.  One of our good friends from Texas sent me the following story from the Houston Chronicle newspaper from this past February.  While the issues presented regarding money bail release are worthy of discussion elsewhere, I must comment on the technical setup shown in the accompanying video.

New Secure and Technologically Advanced Courthouse Opened

https://goo.gl/5ymTeK

We learned via the US Federal Courts newsletter and video about the new courthouse that opened in Mobile, Alabama.

The newsletter says:

“A new federal courthouse has been formally unveiled in Mobile, Alabama, featuring improved safety and access for the public and improvements in information technology.

StateTech Magazine Recognizes the Court Technology Bulletin

We are honored to share the news that the Court Technology Bulletin has been included in the “30 Must-Read State and Local IT Blogs 2018”

The article recommends that government IT workers “(F)ollow these blogs to stay current on the latest news and trends for state government, smart cities, first responders, public libraries, courts and more.”

And we agree that there are several interesting blogs listed in the article.

Thanks go out to StateTech Magazine for the recognition. 

E-Filing/Imaging and Large Files

In a recent project, I set a system rule for e-filing file sizes not being bigger than 20-megabytes upload into the document management system. 

Why am I against these “Jumbo” files?  I explain below…

Practical Augmented Reality Appears

Available at Amazon 

We learned via my colleague, and ace support technician, Charlie Sillery along with a press release of the TeamViewer  Pilot augmented reality solution to see and guide people in remote locations to help them fix their problems.

But before we start, here is a PC Magazine article about the difference between virtual reality and augmented reality.  We discuss the later below…

Electronic Archives and Microfilm

While Block Chain, AI, and GDPR are new and exciting, sometimes we need to talk about older technology.  Most of it is paper which has its own set of challenges.  But microfilm has been the court archiving standard since at least the 1950’s in many jurisdictions.  Should it still be used?  If so, can it be made more useful?  We discuss below.

2018 NCSC Viz-A-Thon Winners Announced

The 2018 NCSC Viz-A-Thon was held last week, and the winners were announced.  The Viz-A-Thon sought to find solutions to the complex court organizational charts that are part of the State Court Organization website.

“The judges were impressed with each of the Finalists. All the solutions thoughtfully explored the structure charts and considered users who need to investigate and explore the structures to understand the courts and guide research and decision making. The solutions were refreshing and creative and demonstrated that the participants thought about the data and the complicated “story” of state court structures.”

The winning team was “Team Bosphorus: Gunhan Pikdoken, Bahadir Cankardes, Emre K. Ar, Şuayip Ekmekci” who presented their solutions from Istanbul, Turkey.

The judges were impressed with the beautiful display that used white space well and easily allowed users to explore the similarities and differences of the state courts. The solution was a full-stack development using D3 and Vue. Team Bosphorus’s experience with UI and UX best practices was clear.”

You can see and test their working solution, along with those of the second and third place teams on the Viz-A-Thon website at:

https://www.ncsc.org/vizathon

Congratulations to all for great work and event.

Video Conferencing Technology in Pretrial Services

My NCSC colleague, Ms. Jannet Lewis has published an excellent case study on the use of secure video conferencing technology to assist in improving video conferencing communication in the Tenth Judicial Circuit, Polk County, Florida.

GDPR Guidance and How to Market Your Court Website

The COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee has recently released two new resource bulletins.  Details below…