Morocco: Court of Cassation to begin digital projects

The Moroccan Court of Cassation has announced plans to undertake several digital projects, including implementing electronic document management and case management and virtual hearings, according to the article La Cour de cassation à l’heure du numérique: Vers l’utilisation des NTIC dans le traitement et la gestion des dossiers, Libération Maroc, 24 January 2013.

HT @GderoubaiX and @adreagui

Archived Tweets for CFCT 2012: Canadian Forum on Court Technology

Archived tweets are available, in .csv format for CFCT 2012: Canadian Forum on Court Technology, held 24-25 October in Montreal.

Twitter hashtags for the conference are #cfct and #cfct2012

Click here for the conference Website.

Click here for the conference program.

ADIJ 2010: Générations Numériques

The 2010 Annual Conference of ADIJ — l’Association pour le développement de l’information juridique — on the topic of Générations Numériques, will be held 30 September 2010, at Maison du Barreau – 2/4 rue de Harlay, Paris 1er.

The conference is co-sponsored by l’Ordre des Avocats de Paris.

The legal informatics sessions of the conference include:

• Bruno Martin Laprade, La dématérialisation du travail collégial au sein d’une Cour Administrative d’Appel : une expérience réussie;
• Flavien Errera, Samuel Frédéric Servière, and Patrice Platel, Atelier Nouvelles technologies en droit public: La réutilisation des données publiques, l’accès du citoyen aux données de l’administration [...].

For more information, please see the announcement.

HT Stéphane Cottin.

Call for Papers: JURIX 2010

A call for papers — with abstract submission deadline of 29 August 2010 and extended full paper submission deadline of 12 September 2010 5 September 2010 — has been issued for JURIX 2010: The 23rd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, to be held 16-17 December 2010 at the University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science in Liverpool, England, UK.

The submission deadline for tutorials, workshops and demonstration proposals is 19 September 2010.

Papers and proposals are invited on the following topics:

• “systems supporting lawyers, in legal reasoning, document drafting, negotiation
• systems supporting the production and management of legislation, in agenda setting, policy analysis, drafting, workflow management, monitoring implementation
• systems supporting the judiciary, in application of the law, analysis of evidence, management of cases
• systems supporting police activities, in forensic inquiries, search and evaluation of evidence, management of investigations
• systems supporting public administration, in applying regulations and managing information
• systems for the retrieval of legal information
• systems supporting legal education
• systems for digital-rights management
• systems supporting the acquisition, management or use of legal knowledge, using rules, cases, neural networks, intelligent agents or other methods
• systems supporting alternative dispute resolution, particularly on-line
• systems and methods to support regulatory compliance and compliance of business processes
• systems and method to support policies and legal issues for social networks
• theoretical foundations for the use of Artificial Intelligence in the legal domain
• models of legal knowledge, including concepts (legal ontologies), rules, cases, principles, values and procedures
• models of legal inference and argumentation
• methods for verifying and validating legal knowledge systems
• methods and techniques for managing legal information in the semantic web
• methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems
• XML standards for legal documents, including legislative, judicial, administrative acts as well as private documents, such as contracts
• methods for modelling the legal interactions of autonomous agents and digital institutions”

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Dr. Radboud G. F. Winkels.

[NOTE: This post was last updated on 1 September 2010 to add the extended full paper submission deadline.]

Fersini et al. on Managing Knowledge Extraction and Retrieval from Multimedia Contents: A Case Study in Judicial Domain

Elisabetta Fersini of Consorzio Milano Ricerche, and colleagues, have published Managing Knowledge Extraction and Retrieval from Multimedia Contents: A Case Study in Judicial Domain, in ICT4JUSTICE 2009: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on ICT Solutions for Justice, Skopje, FYR Macedonia, September 24, 2009 1-12 (George Eleftherakis and Tom van Engers eds., 2009).

Here is the abstract of the paper:

In this paper we present the main challenges and opportunities in exploiting the knowledge embedded into multimedia judicial folders in criminal trials and their influence on the courtroom infrastructure. The paper describes the results of a one year analysis conducted in the Italian and Polish Courtrooms and how to face them in order to make this knowledge available to judicial operators, focusing on the criminal cases during the trials phase. [...] The specific application context, the criminal trial, has been developed in the JUMAS project, co-funded by the European Commission in the context of the ICT program 7th Framework program.

Rescheduled to April 16: Judge Reiling on Technology for Justice, at World Bank

[NOTE: This event has been rescheduled to 16 April 2010, Judge Reiling has announced.]

[NOTE: Updated on 6 February 2010 to correct the start time of the event to 12:30 p.m. and to add a contact for registration. Thanks to Judge Reiling for this information.]

Judge Dory Reiling, Ph.D., Vice President of the Amsterdam District Court, will discuss her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled Technology for Justice: How Information Technology Can Support Judicial Reform (2009), on 16 April 2010 12 February 2010, at 12:30 p.m. 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, at the World Bank, Washington, DC, USA.

If you would like to attend, please contact Jean-Jacques Dethier, Jdethier [at] worldbank [dot] org .

Here is the abstract of the dissertation:

“Technology for Justice examines impacts of information technology (IT) on the administration of justice. Court users all over the world complain mainly about long delays, lack of access to justice and court corruption. Drawing on a broad variety of sources – comparative studies, statistics, case law and jurisprudence, studies on IT use and on court usage – this study examines how IT can help to remedy these complaints. The study, contributing to knowledge about information use and IT in proceedings, analyzes how automated case registration systems have revolutionized thinking about case management and significantly reduced court disposition times. It also explores Internet technology’s potential for increasing access to legal information, predicted by Richard Susskind in 1996, as a means for selfhelp with settlement and support for court access. Providing the first systematic analysis of court corruption, it analyzes IT’s contribution to reducing corruption. It closes by providing insights into the Internet’s new challenges for judiciaries.”

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.

Reiling on How ICT Is Changing the Administration of Justice

Judge Dory Reiling, Vice President of the Amsterdam District Court, has published ICT verandert de rechtspraak = ICT Is Changing the Administration of Justice, in Nederlandse rechtsbestel in Europees perspectief 42 (A. C. Berghuis et al. eds., 2009). (Click here for full text in PDF.) Here is the abstract:

“This article compares ICT in European judicial systems based on the 2008 CEPEJ report [European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), European Judicial Systems: Efficiency and Quality of Justice (2008; Data 2006)] on efficiency and quality of justice. It ends by discussing whether ICT is changing the administration of justice. Office automation, jurisprudence databases, e-mail and internet access for judges and clerks have been implemented in most courts in Europe. Case registration systems were less widely introduced, and case and court management systems even less. The forerunners among the judicial systems are ahead when it comes to digital access and external communication. The inaccuracy of the CEPEJ report makes drawing more detailed conclusions problematic. Some observations from other sources show that managing and developing ICT can be difficult for judiciaries. ICT’s potential is in enhancing timeliness, access, consistency and public trust. Increased public scrutiny and the availability of information engender predictability. However, judging ultimately involves resolving issues whose outcome is unpredictable.”

Judge Reiling will defend her dissertation, entitled Technology for Justice: How Information Technology Can Support Judicial Reform (2009), on December 11, 2009, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Reiling on How Information Technology Can Support Judicial Reform

Judge Dory Reiling of the Amsterdam first instance court, has published her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled Technology for Justice: How Information Technology Can Support Judicial Reform (2009). Here is the abstract:

“Technology for Justice examines impacts of information technology (IT) on the administration of justice. Court users all over the world complain mainly about long delays, lack of access to justice and court corruption. Drawing on a broad variety of sources – comparative studies, statistics, case law and jurisprudence, studies on IT use and on court usage – this study examines how IT can help to remedy these complaints. The study, contributing to knowledge about information use and IT in proceedings, analyzes how automated case registration systems have revolutionized thinking about case management and significantly reduced court disposition times. It also explores Internet technology’s potential for increasing access to legal information, predicted by Richard Susskind in 1996, as a means for selfhelp with settlement and support for court access. Providing the first systematic analysis of court corruption, it analyzes IT’s contribution to reducing corruption. It closes by providing insights into the Internet’s new challenges for judiciaries.”

Judge Reiling will defend her dissertation on December 11, 2009, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Empirical Study of Civil Case Processing in U.S. Federal District Courts

A recent empirical study of civil case management in U.S. federal district courts offers interesting insights into the use of information in civil litigation, and the relationship of certain kinds of information processing to litigation costs and delay.

Earlier in 2009 The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver (IAALS) issued its report entitled Civil Case Processing in the Federal District Courts: A 21st Century Analysis (2009). The report discusses results of an empirical study, covering more than 7600 cases, of civil case management in 8 U.S. federal district courts from October 2005 through September 2006. The methodology included statistical analysis of data taken from court dockets, and interviews with representatives of the courts studied.

Of the factors identified in the study, that appear to contribute to speedier civil case processing in federal courts, the following may be of particular interest to legal informatics researchers:

• schedules featuring shorter durations for all stages of litigation;
• refraining from deviating from those schedules;
• fostering, among counsel, expectations of expedited proceedings;
• collecting and disseminating metadata about case management to facilitate transparency and accountability.

Here are the findings of the report:

• “Finding #1: Cases in which: (1) a trial date is set early, (2) discovery issues are raised and resolved within the set discovery period, and (3) dispositive motions are filed as early as possible tend to be resolved more quickly than cases where these things do not occur. (emphasis added)
• “Finding #2: About one-third of civil cases take more than a year to resolve.
• “Finding #3: Rule 16 scheduling conferences are held in less than half of all civil cases. (emphasis added)
• “Finding #4: The time it takes a judge to rule on motions on disputed discovery, motions to dismiss, and motions for summary judgment varies significantly across courts.
• “Finding #5: Motions to dismiss were frequently filed and granted, even before the Twombly decision. (emphasis added)
• “Finding #6: Holding a hearing is associated with faster times to ruling for motions on disputed discovery, although the evidence is less clear with respect to dispositive motions.
• “Finding #7: Many cases settle shortly after a motion to dismiss or a motion for summary judgment is denied.
• “Finding #8: About 90% of all motions to extend deadlines are granted in every court, but in courts with faster average overall times, many fewer motions to extend deadlines are filed. (emphasis added)
• “Finding #9: External reporting of case management data does appear to encourage courts to rule more rapidly on certain motions than might otherwise be the case. (emphasis added)
• “Finding #10: An attitude of efficiency, especially when embraced by both the bench and bar, can contribute to lower disposition times.” (emphasis added)

The report also offers several recommendations for expediting case processing. Here are the recommendations for courts:

• “1. Setting firm dates early in the pretrial process for the close of discovery, the filing of dispositive motions, and trial, and maintaining those dates except in rare and truly unusual circumstances;
• “2. Ruling expeditiously on motions, even when the motions are denied;
• “3. Limiting the number of extensions sought by the parties during any phase of the case;
• “4. Working to foster a local legal culture that accepts efficient case processing as the norm, and enforcing that culture through active judicial case management (emphasis added); and
• “5. Tracking the status of cases and motions through internal statistical reporting, and disseminating the results internally and externally as appropriate.” (emphasis added)

The report also offers recommendations to lawyers:

• “1. Agreeing to realistic deadlines early in the case and not seeking a deviation from those deadlines except under rare and truly unusual circumstances;
• “2. Commencing discovery early in the discovery period, so that any discovery disputes may be presented to the court and resolved well before the discovery deadline;
• “3. Filing dispositive motions as early as possible in the case; and
• “4. Working within the bar generally, and with opposing counsel specifically, to foster expectations of efficient case processing.” (emphasis added)