Legal technology writer Molly McDonough posted an article about the Utah Outreach Court (https://twitter.com/saltlakejustice). That court takes a courtroom to the litigants, in some instances to the homeless person's campsite, using a repurposed mobile command center vehicle and tents.
Published by press release on March 4, 2021, in US Courts News
"Even as vaccines begin to protect the public from the coronavirus (COVID-19), one of the Judiciary’s biggest priorities is ensuring that the air inside courtrooms and hallways remains safe as courts schedule more in-person legal proceedings.
The Freakonomics website has a page that discusses the quote in the title of this post. It is
obviously appropriate for the courts in this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, but
I have used it in another context, when a new case, document, or e-filing
systems are being introduced into a court.
I explain below…
My friend Bob Ambrogi asked for comment during last Friday’s Legaltech Week Journalists’ Roundtable (an excellent discussion every week about our court customers). The discussion turned briefly to Jason Tashea's proposal via the DayOneProject.org initiative titled “Digitizing State Courts, Expanding Access to Justice”. The following is my partial reply to the question asked.
I applaud Mr. Tashea for thinking about the problem. But I think there is a lot more to consider and there are additional options? I explain…
Winter 2021
There is a massive amount of court technology news this month. We learned about, US Federal Courts response to the Covid-19 pandemic, conference news from the Innovating Justice 2021 and Legalweek 2021 events, California’s CourtStack initiative, Mark Beer’s upcoming talk on AI support for judicial decision making, Seattle and King County’s impact and response to the pandemic caseload, the NACM video podcast on Teleworking, and proposed USA federal government rules on digital format archiving.
Most of our readers have seen the Zoom filer mishap online video
known as “I’m not a cat”. The story even made the news in Germany and late-night TV shows. First, I want to congratulate the Judge for
handling the problem, but I have a different view of how we can learn from
this?
Join us virtually, February 17-18, 2021, for the IJIS Institute National Symposium. This event will highlight national priority initiatives benefiting all levels of government and brings together industry solution providers, government leaders, and representatives from nonprofit and academic organizations to network and collaborate in a neutral, non-sales environment. The National Symposium offers the unique opportunity to hear first-hand from state and local government officials and Federal government leaders.
We’re happy to announce that all session replays from eCourts 2020 are now available at https://vimeo.com/showcase/8000351
Here are some highlights:
If you couldn’t make the conference, missed a session, or want to share a memorable session with a colleague, they’re all ready for you to watch in our eCourts 2020 Virtual Session Showcase.
Get the latest eCourts 2020 information at e-Courts.org
I read with interest announcements regarding a new MicrosoftTeams “Meeting Recap” feature (along with a couple of other interesting functions) that begins roll out soon. The announcement says…
“Originally announced in September 2020, this new meeting experience will allow participants or people unable to attend the meeting to access meeting content after it has ended. Microsoft Teams will automatically share the meeting recording, transcript, chat, shared files, and more in the meeting’s details tab.”
Everyone can easily foresee the surge of in-person court cases that are coming later in 2021. Many courts have put case processing on hold. And assuming that the vaccination program will be successful in the first half of the year, what can courts do to address the case backlog and new matters that will come? I have some ideas that I will share below.
Please also note that my colleagues and friends of the
NCSC have created a tremendous resource around courts and the pandemic at https://www.ncsc.org/newsroom/public-health-emergency
Click on the Statewide Plans to Resume
Court Operations link (you may have to scroll across the red navigation bar to
find it).
Please read the full article here.
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| See attribution below |
Via Press Release Published on January 6, 2021
“After the recent disclosure of widespread cybersecurity
breaches of both private sector and government computer systems, federal courts
are immediately adding new security procedures to protect highly sensitive
confidential documents filed with the courts.
“The federal Judiciary’s foremost concern must be the integrity of and public trust in the operation and administration of its
courts,” James C. Duff, Secretary of the Judicial Conference of the United
States, the Judiciary’s national policy-making body, said in a January 6, 2021,
communication to the courts.
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| See attribution below |
This past weekend I read an article in our local newspaper regarding problems some courts were having dealing with the backlog of housing/landlord-tenant cases due to the pandemic. I was somewhat surprised to read that all their hearings were still being done in-person. Why? I do not know. But for those courts who may not be able to develop their own procedures, I suggest that you take a look at the New Jersey Courts “Instructions for Participants in RemoteCourt Events”? Surely these would be helpful for many court and chambers hearings?
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| image provided by LG.COM |
We just learned of the new transparent OLED (flat panel) displays that are being introduced by the LG corporation at the 2021 ConsumerElectronics Show. While this article projects that these displays would be used at restaurants or subway stations, I think they would be the perfect court clerk/registrar "window". We explain…
Recently I heard multiple legal technology writers bemoan
the slowness that courts adopt and implement new online and similar
services. I explain why that is, and why
it is likely not to get better soon in this post? It is going to be a cold
winter.
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| Mural in the Ariel Rios Federal Building |
We can clearly foresee that the upcoming years will be difficult for governments and courts as tax revenue will take some time to recover following the Pandemic. Court budgets being primarily composed of personnel costs will respond by not filling empty positions, layoffs, and reducing service hours and/or days.
I have an idea that could be considered to ameliorate service
reductions that were introduced in recent years, famously by ride-sharing
companies such as Uber and Lyft, known as “dynamic” or “surge” pricing. I explain below.
A small reminder, Virtual eCourts conference starts today, December 7, 2020. Held each day for about 4 hours, one can still sign up at https://e-courts.org/ for the Zoom webinar.
Monday Sessions
Keynote – Motivating Strategies for a Remote World,
presenter Thomas Topping who is a professional speaker and employee engagement
expert with a master’s degree in Human Resources Management. He has spent his
career transforming teams and training individuals for some of the largest
organizations in the United States. His professional contributions have been
described as innovative, unique, pioneering, daring, and out-of-the-box.
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| A Texas Armadillo |
We learned on November 17, 2020, that:
“The Texas Office of Court Administration (OCA), a judicial
branch agency that assists the Supreme Court of Texas with the administration
of the Texas courts, invites submissions of offers for a statewide, integrated,
comprehensive, cloud‐based uniform case management system and associated
implementation services in compliance with the requirements and terms set forth
in this RFO (UCMS).”
Of note, questions are due by December 8, 2020
with offer submissions due on January 21, 2020.
The full RFO announcement and documents are available online at http://www.txsmartbuy.com/esbddetails/view/212210180
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| St. Helier Harbor |
I heard from our friend, Marcus Ferbrache that his court has released an RFP/Tender for a court case management system for the British Island of Jersey. He explains below:
Join the IJIS Courts Advisory Committee (ICAC) on November 17, 2020 for a no-cost technology summit focused on engaging practitioners and industry, through open and frank conversations that advance the fidelity of virtual court operations. Practitioners will provide insight on needs, priorities, and experiences while the industry shares new opportunities that technology brings to the table.
In recent years I have often recommended projects to
acquire laptops instead of desktop computers.
This recommendation is even stronger today. I explain the reasons for this approach in this week’s
post below.
A free virtual summit is scheduled to be held on Friday, November
13 and continue the following Friday, November 20 from 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST
each day.
The summit is being organized by the National Institute for
Trial Advocacy (NITA) and the Online Courtroom Project. The conference writes “As courts around the country have struggled to continue operations in the face of the unprecedented
coronavirus pandemic, each state and the federal courts have issued their own
set of guidelines to try and resume trials. However, each jurisdiction, and
each judge has also implemented their own set of practices, given their
resources, staffing, budget, and judgment. While most of these national,
regional, and individual practices have been conducted on a trial and error
basis, the goal of this conference is to provide practical recommendations on
procedures, resources, and skills for both courts and attorneys who are looking
to conduct jury trials in this challenging time.
This conference is free of charge. Attendees are encouraged
to donate to a designated charity to assist underserved communities gain
greater access to technology and the internet.
For more and to sign up go to https://www.nita.org/summit-about
The photo above is from the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of
Florida’s Virtual Court Resources by Division/Case type web page at:
In this post we share tips to protect you from malware, Harris County’s new Covid-10 juror procedure video, the new Zoom language interpretation service, and a web page showing how Covid-19 aerosol dispersion works.
Lots of news this time on court tech. We note news about the E-Courts Conference
agenda, a scientific study of reminder systems impact on court appearances, Rocketlawyer
using Utah’s Regulatory Sandbox project to test innovations, why Alexa shouldn’t
be installed on your court’s internal computer network, JAVS management software
suite announcement, a company that
specializes in work from home setups, ransomware at Tyler Technologies, and an amazing number of Tiny Chats produced by our NCSC colleagues.
Just a short note today that shows how tech can really help. In an article on Medium.com, we learned a hand signal has been created that can be used by web/video conferencing users to signal domestic violence.
Elizabeth “Barajas-Román, who is the president and CEO of
the Women’s Funding Network, a global philanthropic network dedicated to women
and girls, wondered: How could survivors reach out and get the help they need
in a safe way? The solution she landed on, with the help of a WFN partner
group, was Signal for Help, a simple hand gesture that people experiencing
abuse could silently use during video calls to tell friends or loved ones that
they’re in trouble.”
The result is the graphic shown above. The signalforhelp.net website has more.
The great benefit of this approach is that it leaves no trail on messaging or e-mail systems that the abuser can find.
Pass this along.
FTA or Failure to Appear and FTP, or Failure to Pay is the source of a great percentage of warrants issued by courts along with giving great stress to those involved.
I have been thinking about the civil unrest earlier this
year and the place that failure to appear warrants seems to be involved. In this post, I will share some recent
thinking about these warrants and some tech that can help?
The Innovation for Justice Program ( www.law.arizona.edu/i4j ) at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law has issued a new and insightful report titled: The Utah Online Dispute Resolution Platform: A Usability Evaluation and Report (full report available online in PDF for download here)
It was announced that Texas District Court Judge Emily Miskel “who in May led the nation’s first-ever remote jury trial, is the recipient of the 2020 William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence, the highest honor bestowed to a state court judge by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). This prestigious award honors a state court judge who demonstrates the outstanding qualities of judicial excellence, including integrity, fairness, open-mindedness, knowledge of the law, professional ethics, creativity, sound judgment, intellectual courage, and decisiveness.”
With the success of web and audio hearings during the Covid-19 pandemic, courts have proven that absent/remote persons can be made available by mobile or computer. It is time now to make this standard practice.
One “unicorn” (a mythical goal) in Court Technology has been that Case Management Systems will have the ability to create comparative case statistics between court systems. Policymakers love that idea so they can compare and punish/reward, but also perhaps better understand policy differences. The announcement that got me thinking about this is the recent NIEM 5.0 announcement that included as part of their update preparation for the future addition of GISM (Generic Statistical Information Model).
Also, understand that the ideal statistical comparison system doesn’t stop between courts, it extends to the full criminal and civil court systems. That brings us to discuss the new announcements and what they might mean for our future unicorn hunting.
We have noted the increasing adoption of text reminders to case parties by the courts before. In this short “tech tip” post we will consider how we can add an automatic reminder via e-mail and even set up an online shared scheduling system?
Two announcements from Thomson Reuters, Quick Check Judicial, and the acquisition of the Caselines system.
August 19, 2020 – Thomson Reuters has introduced Quick Check Judicial, a new Westlaw Edge feature within Quick Check.
Many courts and judicial systems have configured their websites for mobile/cell phone screen size. But many other courts have not. Considering that over 90% of mobile/cell phone users have Internet access from their device, maybe the focus of your online information delivery approach might shift? We discuss two tools that might help?
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| Assateague Island Wild Ponies |
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| https://bit.ly/37YIZ1L |
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Old Davidson County Tennessee Courthouse sculpture by Brent Moore |
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| https://onlinecourtroom.org |
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Now_for_Something_Completely_Different |
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| Big Tex at the Texas State Fair |
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| A meme from Arrested Development, Season 3, Episode 1 |
