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…

This and That in Court Tech – September 2018

eCourts Conference

News on the eCourts 2018 conference, a new ODR pilot for small claims cases in Utah, security problems with the GovPayNow.com website, the IBM Watson AI based closed captioning system, and the UK Metropolitan Police developed mobile fingerprint system.

Smart Phones as Document Scanners for E-Filing

DIY iPhone Document Scanner

We received a question the other day about how to facilitate document/evidence E-filing?  And we first wrote about the use of smartphones for document capture back in 2014.  But after reviewing the article, it is time for an update.

Leveraging the Court Component Model to Connect Business and Technology

Our friends with the IJIS Institute Courts Advisory Committee have developed a web-based tool to help court practitioners find information about technology vendors and products that align with the Court Component Model.  Jenny Bunch of ImageSoft shared the following write-up on behalf of the IJIS Courts Advisory Committee . . . 

NCSC Announces Viz-a-thon Competition

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) is hosting a virtual, multi-week contest to create a supportable, interactive, data visualization of the state court structure charts.  The Grand Prize for the winning entry is $5,000 USD and Runners-up will receive prizes totaling $3,500 USD.

More below...

Policy Recommendations on Public Use of Cell Phones in the Courthouse

Thanks to our good friend Marc Lauritsen’s tweet, we learned of the following press release and report from the Massachusetts Appleseed Center for Law and Justice on the impact of banning cell phones in courthouses.  More below…

This and That in Court Technology – August 2018

In this edition, we share news about eCourts 2018 conference, law enforcement body cameras, the 25th anniversary of PDF, and microfilm to digital conversion technology to write up while the software is installing on my new laptop. 

Court Case Management Systems Part 20: User Interface (UI) and More

https://goo.gl/UGJioL

In this long-delayed edition in the Court Case Management Systems (CCMS) series, we will discuss some thoughts on user interfaces (UI) for court systems.  It is an exciting time to explore this area because the technology is developing quickly, and there are many new possibilities for developers to consider.  And because of all the new developments, this article has been delayed many times.

But it is summer time and so it is time to dive in...

Note: Previous work by our colleagues at the NCSC and other experts provides the list of functionality (the what). This CCMS series has been our attempt to describe “how” technologies have been and could be used in the courts.  

Click here for the previous posts in this series.

North Carolina AOC Issues ICMS RFP

As part of the long-term eCourts vision, the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (NCAOC) is seeking to procure a statewide ICMS. We request that all interested parties respond to the inquiries contained within this RFP by submitting a response by September 25, 2018.

Industry Summit, September 17-18, 2018, in St. Petersburg, Florida

We received the following conference announcement today.

The annual Industry Summit is an opportunity for industry technology leaders to engage in free-flowing discussion with leaders of COSCA, NACM, and CITOC, and representatives from the IJIS Institute, NCSC, and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.  The objective of this two-day event is to provide the industry with insights into the current and emerging technology needs of the courts over the next two to six years.  Working side by side, court and industry technology leaders will identify business problems, brainstorm opportunities, and chart a course for future court technology.

Details below...

COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee Sets Priorities

In the recent committee meeting held in Atlanta, Georgia on July 22-23, 2018 the following priorities for 2018/2019 were set by the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee.  The subjects are:

This and That in Court Tech – July 2018

Animal rescue at Rancho Del Sueno

We share news from California, a private court records access company, a huge report of technology projects from the Ohio state courts, and a commentary regarding a court in Michigan losing 3.6 million paper documents.

E-Filing Used for Theft and Some Remediation Ideas

Thanks to a message via ImageSoft, we learned of a Florida Bar News article describing how a law office manager used the system to “file papers in a foreclosure case” and then took $130,000 that was “left over after the foreclosure sale”.  We discuss the actions taken by the E-Filing Authority and more below…

Changing Frameworks – The Court Component Model and Agile Approaches

Graphic courtesy of Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology article "Component

Based Software Development Life Cycle Models: A Comparative Review" published 30-Jun-2017.

As promised in the recent post introducing the Court Component Model (CCM), some of our NCSC colleagues and partners will be sharing their perspectives on the CCM and ways it can be applied in real-world projects.

NCSC's very own Barb Holmes shares the following on her experiences working in the Pennsylvania Courts and how they combined a component-based approach with agile methods to tackle complex business problems and ever-changing requirements.

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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.

US Federal Court PACER Fees Litigation Decision Discussed

US District Court - Great Falls, Montana

We haven’t commented on the news from late March 2018 on the decision regarding the US Federal Court’s use of the fees collected for their PACER public records access systems.  We share some of our thoughts below.

Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future of Law

We are pleased to share the announcement of the eCourts 2018 conference keynote session.

University of Tennessee Law Professor Benjamin H. Barton will expand on the ideas in his and co-author Stephanos Bibas's 2017 book Rebooting Justice. They argue that our laws are too complex and legal advice too expensive. Both are obstacles for the poor and even middle-class Americans to get help and protect their rights.

Automated Decisions Need Supervision

Writing this post I find myself traveling home a day late due to a computer decision.  My "tale of woe" began last night when I presented myself at my connection gate, with 12 minutes prior to the scheduled departure.  I was informed that my reservation had been canceled, by the airline computer.  This was done despite my instructions at my trip originating airport to keep my original reservations/plans and, I was given a printed ticket. What does this have to do with court automation… I will explain below.

When Might Blockchain Appear in Your Court?

Magistrates Court, Nassau, The Bahamas

Guest bloggers and NCSC colleagues Di Graski & Paul Embley wrote the following for the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee Trends series.  We are proud to present it here in the CTB this week.

Trends Statement:

The verifiable integrity of Blockchain records, linked and secured using cryptography, could soon be used in a variety of innovative ways to resolve court recordkeeping challenges. At the same time, Blockchain presents new legal issues that courts must be prepared to address.

UK Small Claims Online System Updated

https://goo.gl/J9cxhN

We learned in a press release that our favorite and the original, small claims system for the UK Courts have been updated.  The press release is titled: "Quicker way to resolve claim disputes launched online: A new online service to make it quicker and easier for people to claim money owed, resolve disputes out of court and access mediation has gone live."

The new service is available at: https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money