Not Just Police Body Cams

GoPro Pet Camera Mounts

A recent Pennsylvania appellate court decision points out that the record keepers will deal with more than just law enforcement body camera evidence. Courts are having to deal with video evidence from many sources.

CTC 2017: Is your courthouse prepared for a cyber attack?

The CTC-2017 opening keynote speaker is Mark Lanterman, chief technology officer at Computer Forensic Services in Minneapolis.

He will talk about recent high-profile cyber attacks that have victimized businesses, hospitals, and government agencies. He also will tell us about cyber threats that could specifically hurt the courts, such as “The Dark Web,” “The Internet of Things,” and phishing, among other things.

Also, the full detailed conference schedule is also now available once you have created an account.  It's quick and easy to do.

This and That in Court Tech – June, 2017

https://www.travelwisconsin.com/ 

In this month’s news roundup we learn about Wisconsin's E-filing activities, news about Ravel Law and Court Innovations, Google's improved ability in language recognition, and some notes about improving communication understanding.

And last, some CTC 2017 educational program agenda news.

Technology Solutions for Self-Represented Litigants

The University of Denver's Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) announced the release of Court Compass: Mapping the Future of User Access Through Technology, a compendium and analysis of court-offered solutions for self-represented litigants (SRLs), along with maturity models to guide the development of integrated solutions in courts nationwide. See this recent post on the IAALS Online Issues Blog for more details.

IAALS is also participating with a number of other organizations, including the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), on the newly formed OASIS Litigant Portal Technical Committee (LP TC). 

The LP TC will be developing technical standards for litigant portal interfaces that will expedite and simplify development of solutions to assist potential litigants without legal representation overcome barriers of cost and complexity. The work of the LP TC will leverage experiences in recent portal projects as well as requirements identified in a 2015 report titled Building a Litigant Portal: Business and Technical Requirements. Any OASIS member may participate on the LP TC. If you're interested but not yet a member of OASIS, information on how to join is available here.

Courts Could Help to Protect Drivers from Traffic Ticket Phishing E-mail

CyberheistNews posted an article about “the NY State Department of Motor Vehicles warning about a phishing scam where New York drivers are being targeted, stating they have 48 hours to pay a fine or have their driver's license revoked.” In this post, we share some ideas that courts may consider to help to reduce or eliminate this problem.

Tyler Technologies Acquires Modria

Via press release on May 30, 2017 -Tyler Technologies, Inc. announced it has acquired Modria, a company specializing in online dispute resolution (ODR) for government and commercial entities, to complement its courts and justice and appraisal and tax solutions.

CTC 2017 Early Bird Deadline Extended to May 31st

Salt Palace Convention Center

CTC 2017 is only about 100 days away! Are you registered yet?

CTC 2017 features five tracks this year (plus the usual bonus of a separate sponsor track). This year’s sessions will focus on:

• Show Me the Data!
• Next Generation Courts
• Maintaining Public Trust and Confidence
• User-Friendly Courts
• Looking to the Future

Check out some of the highlighted sessions in each track, and keep your eyes open for the complete agenda, coming very soon!

Register before May 31st to get the early bird rate of $750.00. Once you register, you’ll be able to secure your hotel room from one of the four great properties, all within walking distance of the Salt Palace Convention Center.

Click here to go to the registration webpage.

Also - click on the registration drop-down menu to learn about the McMillan Scholarship opportunity.  Submissions are due June 19, 2017.

This and That in Court Technology - May, 2017

New US Courts Jury Kiosks

In this month's news we learn about Michigan's E-filing RFP award, two new court tech announcement from the US Federal Courts, new ideas from the Open Law Lab blog on service process in Massachusetts, the Supreme Court of India's new CMS/E-filing system, the 2016 Judicial Effectiveness Index for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and about the 2017 E-Sign Records Conference to be held in San Francisco later this year.

JTC releases "Courts Disrupted" paper . . .

The Joint Technology Committee (JTC) has released a new Resource Bulletin titled “Courts Disrupted.” This paper takes a captivating look at today’s fast-changing world of innovation and public expectations. Recognizing courts will not remain untouched by disruptive innovation, the paper encourages embracing rather than resisting the opportunities to improve business processes and make justice more readily available to a wider audience.

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.