Gorham on State Courts, E-Filing, and Diffusion of Innovation

Ursula Gorham, JD, MLS, MPM, of the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, will present a paper entitled State Courts, E-Filing, and Diffusion of Innovation, at dg.o 2012: The 13th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, to be held 4-7 June 2012 at the University of Maryland, College Park, in College Park, Maryland, USA.

Here is the abstract:

Despite the widely touted benefits of electronic filing (“e-filing”), state courts continue to lag behind their federal counterparts and remain at various stages of evaluation, development, and implementation of e-filing systems. A number of reasons for lack of progress – e.g., concerns regarding privacy, limited funding, the judiciary’s lack of awareness of the benefits of e-filing – have been suggested. This paper, building upon these suggestions, proposes a framework of analysis based upon a theory of innovation and diffusion, seeking to identify those factors that contribute to state courts’ adoption of e-filing. The proposed framework of analysis is one avenue for exploring the underlying reasons for sluggish progress in this area, and this exploration will pave the way for a more comprehensive assessment of state courts’ current e-filing initiatives, the challenges that state courts face as they transition to e-filing, and the policies that can be adopted to overcome these challenges.

For the full text of the paper, please contact the author.

Thanks to Ms. Gorham for granting permission to post the abstract.

McMillan on E-Filing Systems for Self-Represented Litigants

James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts has posted E-Filing Must Support the Self-Represented, Court Technology Bulletin, 8 September 2011.

This is the latest post in Mr. McMillan’s series, Eight Rules of E-Filing.

In this post, Mr. McMillan argues that e-filing systems implemented by courts in which large numbers of self-represented litigants appear must be designed for use by those litigants. Mr. McMillan then describes a number of court technologies that that enable self-represented litigants to file litigation papers online.

For more information, please see the complete post.

De Lucena Neto on Lawsuit Automation in Brazil

Professor Dr. Cláudio de Lucena Neto of Universidade Estadual da Paraíba Departamento de Direito Privado presented a paper entitled The [Effects] of Lawsuit Automation in a Labour Court and in a Common Justice Court in the State of Paraíba, Brazil: A Comparative Case Study, at LexInformatica 2011 / CLIT 2011: The 4th Regional Conference on Law and Electronic Communications / The 5th Regional Conference on Cybercrime, Law and Information Technology, held 29-30 June 2011, in Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa. Here is the abstract:

Technological development has introduced deep changes in the legal field. In Brazil, the introduction of new technologies in legal activities that made it possible for a lawsuit to be fully conducted by electronic means in the various courts and judicial instances, is a remarkable process, that keeps being constantly improved.

Information systems and lawsuit processing software applications were regulated in Brazil with the introduction of Federal Law number 11.419/2006, which enables the organisms of the Judiciary Power to fully or partially automate its lawsuits, making the practice of procedural acts, as the sending of an electronic petition and other procedural communications, possible through Internet. Moreover, the referred legal text faces criticism from authors in Brazil, under the argument that it already went into effect with flaws, and that it is not able, in the present, to reflect the recent changes and updates in the field of new technologies.

Although not yet implemented in all judicial organisms, instances and districts, lawsuit processing software applications are already adopted in various spheres of justice administration. An experience that occurs in Labor Courts, one of the pioneer instances to implement automation lawsuit tools in all its districts and in the creation of a fully electronic pilot project district should be highlighted in the Brazilian national scenario, in comparison to a Common Justice District, which is based on traditional, paper processing practices.

The use of information systems and lawsuit processing software applications, besides being an important tool in the numerous attempts to enhance the speed of the legal system’s response to the citizen, also reflects in the internal organization of the judiciary system, and in the practices of lawyers and the citizens themselves, as it happens with the information search and petition system which can be operated through the World Wide Web. On the other hand, it brings along flaws and difficulties, as privacy issues and technical support problems which have not been easily solved, troubles that represent obstacles which need to be faced and surpassed, on the way to the offer of an adequate judicial service.

For the full text of the paper, please contact the author. Thanks to Dr. de Lucena Neto for granting permission to post the abstract.

A related paper, Cláudio de Lucena Neto and Coronel Salvino de Figueiredo, The Potential of e-Justice in Brazil, was presented at The 3rd International Seminar on Information Law, 25-26 June 2010, in Corfu, Greece.

McMillan: Eight Rules of E-Filing

James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts has begun a new series of posts on court e-filing systems, entitled Eight Rules of E-Filing, at Court Technology Bulletin.

Mr. McMillan explains that in many U.S. court systems, “physical case files” continue to play a prominent role; and where document filing has been automated, it is often not integrated with other court information systems, such as those for “registry/docket (historical event record), participants, and scheduling /task control.”

In this series of posts, Mr. McMillan explains the benefits of integrating “[e]-filing, document, and case management functionality,” and offers best practices for e-filing systems.

Velicogna et al. on e-Justice in France: The e-Barreau Experience

Marco Velicogna of IRSIG‐CNR, and Antoine Errera and Stéphane Derlange, both of Tribunal administratif de Paris, have published e-Justice in France: The e-Barreau Experience, Utrecht Law Review, 7(1), 163-187 (2011). Here is the abstract:

Recent field research projects in the justice sector have shown how the development of e-justice entails much more than developing, installing and connecting technological devices or providing normative recognition to the use of the digital medium instead of the traditional one for the exchange of documents. This article presents an exploratory case-study describing the development of an e-filing and document-exchange system between lawyers and ordinary courts in the French justice administration. As it soon became apparent, the real challenge did not lie in the search, assembly and manufacture of technological tools, but in the creation of the governance net of relevant organizational actors that was needed to successfully sustain and implement the innovation. It concerned looking for acceptable compromises as to what could be done and how. The challenge was also to find ways to motivate users to actively participate in the creation of the new service which could not work without them. Furthermore, external and somewhat unforeseeable events also played a relevant role in defining choices, the tempo and the possibilities for the success of the system’s design and implementation.

HT Ronald van den Hoogen.

European e-CODEX Project Website Available

e-CODEX, a new European legal information systems interoperability project, apparently coordinated by the European Commission Directorate-General Justice, has been described on a new Website.

e-CODEX appears to be intended to “support the further development of the European e-Justice portal,” and to carry out interoperability goals expressed in “The Council Action Plan on European e-Justice,” and the European Commission’s report, “Towards a European e-Justice Strategy.”

According to the Website, the project will work on the following topics/functions:

• “e-Identity-management for natural and legal persons, roles,
  mandates and rights, user authentication and authorization
• e-Signatures, verification and implementation
• e-Payment
• e-Filing, exchange of documents and data
• document standards.”

HT Ronald van den Hoogen.

McMillan on Electronic Documents: Benefits & Potential Pitfalls

James McMillan of the National Center for State Courts has published Electronic Documents: Benefits and Potential Pitfalls, in Future Trends in State Courts 2010, p. 180-184.

The article discusses the costs and benefits of “paper-on-demand” (POD) electronic document management systems for courts; proprietary versus open standards; word processing formats; PDF; other image-based formats; XML; and NIEM, the National Information Exchange Model, an important XML interchange standard for U.S. government entities.

Here is a summary:

The severe budget cutbacks generated by the recession have been a driving incentive for courts to explore the merits of converting to a “paper-on-demand” (POD) electronic environment. For example, an ROI (return on investment) study in Manatee County, Florida, revealed a cost saving of almost $1,000,000 based on e-filing their 2,321,252 documents per year (Shore, Singer, and Pettijohn, 2009).

In POD courts, documents are e-filed to the court or scanned into the system upon receipt. This electronically stored document is accepted as the original, while the paper documents can be returned to the filer. In addition, multiple users can view documents from their workstations simultaneously. This desirable working environment is being sought by courts throughout the country. King County (Washington), Oregon, Missouri, Colorado, and Orange County (California) have been trendsetters in POD efforts, while large projects are underway in Iowa, Massachusetts, and Alabama, just to name a few. [...]

Courts must be careful in their electronic document decisions. Some vendors may try to lock them into proprietary file formats to preserve their application and licensing revenue. Courts should attempt to leverage standards-based electronic file formats when possible.

Not all court users will be comfortable or proficient with certain electronic document formats. Some formats may have the buy in from the bench or the bar, but many may not be easily or readily available to those in court without lawyers, or may require more firsthand support than the courts or vendors are prepared to provide. Take into account these access considerations before settling into a particular format/solution.

The POD court is an ideal worth striving for; however, there is still more work to be done so that the word-processing applications can support the needs of the justice system. It is possible to create NIEM-compliant justice-document applications today with common word-processing tools and some additional programming. Therefore, courts should be selective in these efforts due to the cost of development. And, it is hoped, that in the near future software tools will be available that are integrated into our common applications.

Deutscher EDV-Gerichtstag 2010 Preliminary Program Available

The preliminary program has been issued for Deutscher EDV-Gerichtstag 2010, to be held 15-17 September 2010 in Saarbrücken, Saarland, Germany.

For more information, please see the conference Website.

Conference on Privacy and Public Access to Court Records

The 7th Conference on Privacy and Public Access to Court Records will be held on March 4 and 5, 2010 in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. The conference is sponsored by the Center for Legal and Court Technology and the National Center for State Courts, with assistance from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Topics to be discussed at the conference include:

• Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?: A Decade of Court Public Access and Privacy Policy Development
• Court Public Access Policy Implementation: Recent Developments
• Emerging Issues in E-filing and Privacy
• Bulk Data: Latest Trends
• New Media in the Courtroom and at the Courthouse: Texts, Tweets & Blogs, Oh My!
• Privacy and the Public Record: The Big Picture Debate
• Public Electronic Access to Federal Court Records “PACER”: New Initiatives, New Challenges

For more information, please see the conference announcement.

HT Court Technology Bulletin.