Microsoft AI Services are Getting Real

Brussels Atomium

An excellent article posted on arstechnica.com on May 10, 2107  titled: “Microsoft’s bid to bring AI to every developer is starting to make sense”.  The subtitle is: “The API’s are getting good enough to be built into production systems”.  This is getting interesting.  More on the article below.

DC Courts Compile Report on Remote Public Access to Electronic Court Records

Prepared by the Remote Access to Court Electronic Records (RACER) Committee of the Council for Court Excellence, and assisted by the National Center for State Courts, with funding by the State Justice Institute, the committee released their report in April 2017 on public access to electronic court records.

More From CourtHack 2.0

As promised, we have more details and now video from CourtHack 2.0.

Tech Notes – April, 2017

CourtHack 2017 Champions

News about CourtHack 2017, a podcast on law enforcement body-worn cameras and the courts, and more from Alabama on court records policy.

Handwritten Signatures - "Now a Punchline" - Part 4

There is a new example in our continuing series on traditional handwritten signatures being used to fake court documents has surfaced.  More below.

This and That in Court Tech – April, 2017

Illinois' Abraham Lincoln
statue in London

In this round-up of news, we hear about E-filing in Illinois, Identity Theft in Alabama, the NAJIS annual conference, Foxit PDF on forms, warnings about legal chatbots, an article on court/legal algorithmic projects, and an interesting cloud adoption survey results article.

Structuring Documents – Why and How

The challenge we have as courts is to turn documents into actionable information.  We most commonly do this by re-entering data into the case management systems database.  The courts can and should do better by using the software that most everyone already owns.  We discuss below.

Sponsorship opportunities at CourtHack 2.0

NCSC will be hosting CourtHack 2.0 April 22-23, 2017 at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Participating teams will come together from a variety of sources: universities, not-for-profit development groups, industry, courts, and individuals gathering and forming teams on site. We anticipate around 150 participants, dividing into about 30 teams. Court experts from across the county, including judges, court administrators, and court CIOs, will participate as mentors, providing insight into the issues and the potential benefits to both courts and the communities they serve.

The challenge sets for CourtHack 2.0 include:

1. Fairness in Fees, Fines, and Bail Practices
2. Fairness: Leveling the Playing Field
3. Understanding Customer Experience
4. Translating Legalese to Folksonomy
5. Social Support for Families in Crisis
6. Wildcard! Closing Gaps in the Court System

More details can be found at the CourtHack website: http://courthack.org/.

There are also still a number of great sponsorship opportunities available. Go here for details.

Time is running out - register now for the 2017 Court Industry Summit

If you are a solution provider to courts, you don't want to miss this opportunity to have an open and candid dialog with thought leaders from the judicial branch and your private-sector peers.

This event will be hosted by the NCSC and facilitated by the IJIS Institute's Courts Advisory Committee. Organizations who are members of IJIS receive a registration discount.

Topics will include technology trends, disruptors, and next-generation court technology standards with perspectives from leaders in federal, state and local courts. You and your industry peers will also have the opportunity to share your perspectives on trends and technologies courts should be considering.

The summit will be held April 19-20 at the Princeton Marriott at Forrestal in Princeton, NJ. For more information and to register, go to http://www.ncsc.org/Conferences-and-Events/Industry-Summit-2017.aspx.

Today (March 29) is the last day to get the group rate at the hotel - go here to make your reservations.

Daniel Lewis on Judge Analytics

This week we are happy to share a new interview with Daniel Lewis, CEO and Co-founder of Ravel Law on their new Judge Analytics system.

Some More Thoughts on CMS Data Conversion

Recently there has been news about case management systems projects with data conversion error problems.  While we have written about this issue before, I would like to share some more thoughts on this important issue.

This and That in Court Technology – March, 2017

Time for another round-up of court technology related items.  In this edition we remind everyone of the CTC 2017 proposal deadline, the Wyoming courts need to increase their Court Automation Fee, an online paperless court savings calculator, an argument for AI technology to replace juries in the future, and a story about "Amy Ingram", a digital scheduling assistant "bot" program.

CTC 2017 Call for Proposals

Salt Lake City, Utah skyline

The Court Technology Conference (CTC) 2017 will be held September 12-14 in Salt Lake City, Utah at the Salt Palace Convention Center. If you know CTC, you know our tradition of bringing new perspectives to techy tools for the court profession. This year we are reaching out to the court community for session ideas that will energize teams of administrators, technologists, and judges to attend our education program.

Why do Court IT Projects Fail?

A good number of court IT projects fail.  I share my list as to what and why in this Court Tech Bulletin post for the end of February 2017.

CTC-2017 Program Development Survey

Our conference planners for the upcoming CTC-2017 to be held in Salt Lake City from September 12-14, 2017 are asking for your help.  They have posted an online survey to gather your ideas to make the conference the best it can possibly be.

To take the survey click here.

Also, conference registration is open and available at http://www.ctc2017.org/Registration.aspx

Cell phones out of control? Call Yondr.

Fed up with cell phones in your courtroom? Concerned about the surreptitious recording of witnesses, undercover agents and/or jurors? Are your jurors accessing cell/mobile devices when they shouldn't be? Are witnesses in your courtrooms communicating via text when they shouldn't be?   At the E-Courts 2016 conference we learned about Yondr, a company that provides a new and different solution for cell/mobile phone device security in courthouses and secure facilities.

Court Tech Related News and Notes – February, 2017

We have news about Margaret Hagan’s new book, digital justice around the world, New Hampshire’s neutral citation program, Tyler Technology in Maine, a new name for the FACT group, and a survey on social media.

Machine Intelligence Analyses Judges

I have predicted for a very long time that the “market research” that started with consumers in the 90’s with the advent of the Internet would be coming to the courts. LexisNexis made it official this week in their press release “LexisNexis Integrates Lex Machina Legal Analytics into Lexis Advance Online Legal Information Solution”

What does this mean?  I will begin the discussion below.

Courtrooms - How to Get Quiet

We used to say about computers that you can never have too much RAM or too much disk space.  Similarly in courtrooms one cannot make them too quiet.  We discuss why and how on this below.

CourtHack 2.0 Coming - Spring, 2017

Robot lawyers that help file court appeals and geo-positioning technology that alerts police officers when court orders are being served in their area are just two of the innovative technologies developed at NCSC’s first CourtHack in 2016. It was so successful that CourtHack 2.0 is being held April 22-23, 2017, at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick. CourtHack aims to attract the brightest legal minds, technologists, entrepreneurs, and others to compete in a 30-hour hackathon to develop technologies to improve the administration of justice.  Court experts, including judges, court administrators, and court CIOs from across the country, participate as mentors and advisors.

This and That in Court Technology – January, 2017

Just like the National Football League (USA style pictured here), there is a lot of news regarding digital transformation.  The edition has notes on an American Bar Association report on E-Briefing, Nebraska appellate court E-filing, a Robot Lawyer application for parking tickets, a RAND corporation report on “Future Proofing” justice, commentary on potentially opening California legal publication, and a couple of technologies that need to be sent to the trash bin.

Some Big Court Technology Corporate News

Two changes in court technology-related corporations came to our attention this week via press releases.

Court Tech Research & Training News – January, 2017

There have been several interesting articles, and research published related to court technology topics over the past several months.  In this post, we share articles on Decision Making, Online Access to State Judicial Systems, Evaluating the Use of Videoconferencing Technology in Domestic Violence Ex Parte Hearings, Blockchain technology as a regulatory technology, and a Free Webinar on Cybersecurity coming up on January 18, 2017.