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

Graphical Association for Scheduling

Some of our long-time readers may notice that I am a fan of graphical displays to help to connect information and make things easier to understand.  And you might also remember that I have been testing the X.AI artificial intelligence scheduling assistant, Amy Ingram (but I found they also have Andrew).  This week I learned that they are testing a graphical reporting tool for their scheduling system.  Cool, I thought. More below...

More This and That in Court Tech – March 2018

https://goo.gl/yg8YSH

This edition contains a Judge’s response on court automation project criticism, Google Plus Addresses, a lawsuit between judges and clerk regarding their electronic document system implementation, editing PDF documents, the Indiana court’s E-filing implementation web page, and the new NCSC home page is announced.

How Courts Can Use Reminders to Reduce Failure to Appear

Franklin County, Kansas Courthouse

Our guest blogger this week is Mr. Ibrahim Aissam, Chief Technology Officer from eCourtDate.com.  He explains the benefits to courts of sending reminders:

Courts and justice agencies around the country struggle with reducing failure-to-appear rates. Although there will probably never be a fail-proof solution to have a 100% appearance rate, technology can certainly help. It’s hard to believe that something as simple as text message reminders consistently reduces FTAs. Sometimes, people just need a nudge to go to court. The following are a few tips for any court considering or planning a reminder program, regardless of the technology used:

Court Document Verification in Brazil

The Supreme Court of Brazil

Last week I had the great honor of speaking with a very distinguished group of judges and lawyers from Brazil here at the NCSC. 

While I was preparing for the visit I found an order from one of the Federal Judges.  While reviewing it I found several very interesting ways that they are dealing with the electronic document verification in their courts.

This and That in Court Technology – Early March, 2018

Lady Justice - Supreme Court of Nigeria

This month’s edition we share posts regarding the Court Messaging Project, elimination of paper submissions at the Supreme Court of Nigeria, another good online traffic case dispute resolution story, Code for America CourtBot, Massachusetts Trial Courts eliminating court reporters, and links to the Global Legal Hackathon.

Registration for eCourts 2018 is open!

The day has come: Registration for eCourts 2018 is open. Register today to book at our lowest rate during Bonus Play.

eCourts is NCSC’s premium education conference where we focus on the hottest court management topics driven by the latest trends in technology. eCourts is the right conference for those seeking an immersive learning experience.

We are also launching our new eCourts website. We’ll be updating the site with conference information as we get closer. Bookmark the site today and follow NCSC on Twitter or Facebook, for all the latest.

(And in case you missed it, we’re taking your session proposals until March 9.) 

E-Courts 2018 Call for Proposals

E-Courts 2018 will take place at The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, December 10-12 and will provide opportunities to learn about practical applications of technology and innovations that may impact courts. This year we are reaching out to the community for session ideas to energize teams of administrators, technologists, and judges attending NCSC’s signature conference this year.

Technology, Borders and the Law

An excellent and thought-provoking post by Amy L. Howe on her blog discusses the current case before the Supreme Court of the United States regarding law enforcement warrant based access to Microsoft E-mail stored overseas in Ireland.

This is but one example of a huge issue facing the law and courts as technology makes national borders increasingly meaningless.

Georgia Supreme Court Issues New Rule on Recording Devices

Issued by the Georgia Supreme Court on February 6, 2018:

"The following order was passed:

It is ordered that Uniform Superior Court Rule 22, which relates to the use of electronic devices in courtrooms and recording of judicial proceedings by representatives of the news media and other persons, be amended. The amended Rule 22, which is the product of several years of study and discussion by the Council of Superior Court Judges, this Court, and numerous organizations that provided written and oral comments on proposed rule drafts, replaces the existing Rule 22 in its entirety.  The amended rule continues to implement OCGA § 15-1-10.1 but is updated to reflect developments over the last two decades in recording technology, in the news media, and, most significantly, in recording devices – namely, the smart phones and other mobile computers with recording capabilities that today are routinely carried and used by most people in this state.  The amended Rule 22 will take effect on May 1,2018, and reads as follows:

Social Media and the Courts Policy Reviewed & Some Sad News

The Vermont Courts are considering new rules for use of social media in their courts.  I am a great fan of the work of retired Supreme Court Justice John Dooley and his participation in this work had me take notice  (btw, Justice Dooley gave the keynote speech at the first E-Courts Conference).  Also, since we are on the subject, we share some information from our NCSC Social Media and the Courts Network website.  And last, we received some sad news this week on the passing of court technology pioneer, Sir Henry Brooke.

This and That in Court Technology – January 2018

Kansas Sunflower Field

This month we share news about a new CMS project for Kansas, Microsoft’s Skype Interview Scheduler, Legal Tech Design’s pop-up blockchain class, a well formatted legal pleading from the New Zealand courts, and useful feature tips for the Chrome browser.

JTC Resource Bulletins on ODR

In case you haven't seen them already, the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) published two resource bulletins last month on the topic of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). These papers provide excellent insight into how courts are leveraging technology to expand services and provide more timely and cost effective ways for citizens to resolve disputes.

Court Waiting Areas and Tech

One thing that courts do is to make people wait.  While technology can help to alleviate some of the waiting time for participants, we make the wait less stressful and perhaps even productive.  More below…

Florida Courts Offer New Litigant Help App

In an article posted at WFSU Public Media on December 15, 2017, we learned about the new Florida Courts Mobile App that was unveiled by Chief Justice Jorge Labarga for the Florida Civil Justice Commission.  It was noted in the article that “Former Florida Bar president and Commission on Access to Civil Justice member Greg Coleman says improved mobile access will help people who can’t afford attorneys.”

New York State Courts Announce High-Tech Courtrooms

Via two press releases this month, we learn about new high-tech courtrooms in the New York City Family Court  location in Brooklyn and in  Westchester County Supreme Court in White Plains, New York

More below...

Structuring Court Communications with an App

Courts are different than many other businesses or services.  A rather obvious statement I know.  But a very important difference is that we have very formal court rules and legal statutes that create the steps, as well as boundaries, in how information is presented.  The rules also determine how the courts evaluate the completeness and truthfulness of the information presented.  Because of these structures and rules, I have been very cautious about the court's use of social media that as we know, have very few if any rules.

But communication is hard for many people.  This is especially true for communication that is structured to persuade or argue a point of view or law.  Therefore, an app that helps people, especially the self-represented litigants to accomplish this, is of great interest to me.

Courts Implement New Online Search Systems

We learned this week about two new search systems being implemented by the state courts in Arkansas and Illinois.  More below…

Webinar: How to Incorporate Plain Language into Court Forms, Websites, and Other Materials

The National Association for Court Management, in partnership with the Self-represented Litigation Network (SRLN), presented its third webinar of 2017 on November 29, 2017.

Fortunately for those of us who missed the live event, they have saved the slides and recording at https://www.srln.org/node/1313 

Oregon eCourt: A Technology and Business Success Story

Brookings, Oregon from:
http://visittheoregoncoast.com/

While researching last week’s article on E-filing implementation statistics I ran across the 2016 Annual Report of the Oregon Judicial Branch titled: Focus on Technology.  It was a great surprise to find sixteen pages were devoted to a detailed report of their eCourt project with the following section headings:

• Project background and approach
• Developing user buy-in
• The project’s guiding principles
• How they conducted planning, law, and policy workshops
• Vendor selection and contracting
• Work with the legislature
• External stakeholder buy-in
• User project participation and training
• Integrations and implementation
• Implementation of lessons learned from the courts
• What “worked well” to make the Oregon eCourt project a success
• Current benefits from the Oregon eCourt System
• Public access and statewide mandatory eFiling
• Going forward – Continuing development

I believe that this report should be mandatory reading for all court technologists.  Congratulations and well done Oregon Judicial Branch.

It is available for download in PDF here.

Millions and Millions Served

An original McDonald's Restaurant

When I was young, the US fast food restaurant, McDonald’s would display that they had sold over 1 million and later 2 million hamburgers (see picture at the left).  Court E-filing has been like that.  Slow adoption at first.  But now after 20 years, there are now millions of E-filings recorded.

Microsoft/Legal Aid Tech/Voice-Response Portals

There is so much to this story I couldn’t really write a title that reflected all of the exciting news.  We learned that Microsoft is currently investing in applying their new AI enabled voice-response technology to the problem of legal aid for the disadvantaged.  They have engaged with our friends and experts in the subject at the Legal Services Corporation and Probono.net. Much more below...

Problems and Solutions for Court Videoconferencing

A BuzzFeed News article brought to our attention a report done on the use of videoconferencing in the Courts of the United Kingdom and Wales.  We share some notes from the articles and discuss our potential technology solutions and other resources below.

Guidelines for Portable Communication Devices

On September 12, 2017, in the news release, the US Federal Courts announced guidance on the use of these devices in courthouses.  The document, in particular, discusses the use of devices by the media.  More below.

Clerk Bot

Craig Van Brussel, Chief Technology Officer in the First Judicial District of Florida shared news about their testing of “Robotic Process Automation” that was developed by Computing Systems Innovations (CSI) in Orlando.  More below:

Court Cyber Security Risk Discussed

After the great CTC keynote address on cyber-security I had some thoughts on what are the court’s actual areas of vulnerability.  That and information about a nice PDF converter utility below:

This and That in Court Technology – October, 2017

News from the California courts, digital recording technology advances, smartphone language interpretation, the NCRA, Social Security Number replacement, Mississippi court rules, a conference in New Zealand and a useful Dutch Legal Technology newsletter/blog, and a good CTC 2017 summary.

LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Specification 5.0 Draft Announced

In the first major update since 2013, the Oasis-Open LegalXML Electronic Court Filing (ECF) Technical Committee has announced version 5 for sixty-day public review.  Since the standard is the most widely used electronic filing standard, this is a significant advancement. 

More below…

A New NCSC Report on Automated Redaction

https://www.shareicon.net/ 

In a follow-up to the July paper on “Best Practices for Court Privacy Policy Formulation”, the NCSC with the support of The State Justice Institute, the new paper, "Automated Redaction Proof of Concept Report" addresses the need for policies and technology for redaction of protected information. 


More below…

A Special Court Technology Procurement Workshop

A special 1 1/2 day Technology Procurement Workshop for Court Leaders and Technology Staff, Vendors, and Consultants will be presented in Phoenix, Arizona, November 7-8, 2017 at the Trial Court Education Center, Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County.

More below...

The 2017 McMillan Scholarship Award Winner

Jose Lezcano and Jim McMillan

Jose Lezcano, the Judicial Branch IT Director in Puerto Rico was honored with the McMillan Scholarship at the CTC 2017 Conference for his technology leadership.  More below:

CTC 2017 – a Milestone Conference

The conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah from September 12-14, 2017 had many significant events and presentations.  We will start the list in this post with more to come in the very near future.

Tech Ideas for Court Emergency and Disaster Planning

Hurricane Irma from the ISS

With the recent serious storms in the USA, planning to deal with emergency situations is on our minds.   But many things have changed because of the court's conversion to E-filing and electronic documents. We discuss below.

CTC-2017 News - Get Ready

Court Technology Conferences are an incredible deal. Many other tech conferences cost $1,500 or more.  When we make this post, there are less than two days to register for the conference at the regular rate.  CTC is the event of the year, some highlights below.

Preserving the Record

The article last week regarding Judge Michael Marcus and his website, smartsentencing.com got me thinking about one of the court’s most important duties, preserving the record.  I share my list of strategies and options below.