As courts go digital: what about online dispute resolution?

Your technology is fifteen years old, a member of the Bar said to me recently, implying we were way behind the times with the technology the Dutch judiciary uses to build its digital procedures. Even if that is right (which it isn’t), that would be a great leap forward from our current systems dating from the 1980s. And yet, he had a point. The new procedure is simpler, but it still looks a lot like the old paper process. A lot of what we do still is a digital version of our paper process. The evolution of the Google car shows we need to develop one step at a time. Moving from a paper based organisation to online dispute resolution, or to an information-based organisation, involves learning to work with new technology. However, we also need to think about what comes after this step. This blog tackles one of the - for traditional courts - most disruptive technologies around: online dispute resolution (ODR).  

As the Dutch judiciary is going digital, the question arises whether this should also include ODR, and whether ODR can replace a face to face hearing in court. Are Skype and FaceTime capable of supporting a debate about the merits of facts and rules, and are people familiar enough with remote communication to grasp new ideas remotely? Or will ODR be suitable for simple disputes only?  

ODR is in the spotlight. In February 2015, the ODR Advisory Group of the Civil Justice Council in the United Kingdom presented Online Dispute Resolution for low value civil claims. Presided by Richard Susskind, the Group examines the field of ODR and makes recommendations for ODR in the legal system of the UK. The report is supported with a wonderful web site  full of background documents, video’s and interviews.  

The system, Her Majesty’s Online Court (HMOC), has two main goals: reduce the cost of dispute resolution and increasing access to justice. Whether or not these two goals are mutually exclusive has been a subject for heated debate for years.
HMOC’s scope will be disputes that are not too complex, and with a value of £ 25.000 at most. It will have three tiers. 

Some first impressions

Tier 1 is mainly about providing information. A web platform can serve to provide this kind of information, unilaterally or through interactive Q&A. My favourite platform is the UK’s Advicenow.org. In the Netherlands, het Juridisch Loket, the government-provided free legal kiosk, is such a platform, and there is interactive Q&A on Rechtwijzer, by the Dutch Legal Aid Board. Modria, the makers of the eBay and PayPal dispute resolution systems, also built Rechtwijzer 2.0. This new Rechtwijzer, now in the final phases of development, is, at present, meant to provide support for couples managing their separation or divorce.
Automated negotiation support in a web platform with user interaction, like Cybersettle, segues into Tier 2. In Tier 2, a human facilitator/mediator can use remote communication, either synchronous such as instant messaging, video conferencing or the telephone, or asynchronous communication like messages or email. Communication with parties is needed to reduce the complexity of the dispute to a level that enables resolving it.   
In Tier 3, the online judge can also use remote communication where needed. This judge also needs a digital case file and secure web communication.
Hazel Genns research taught us that the nature of the problem people have is an important determinant for the type of resolution they require. Consumer problems are resolved easily if the seller has an effective complaints procedure. Problems in long term relationships like family and labour problems are hard to resolve, but also hard to bear, which is an incentive to resolve them consensually. Problems with government agencies tend to be harder to resolve... Our own experience with the eKantonrechter, a simple, consensual court procedure for simple problems, shows that there seems to be little inherent demand for this type of procedure. Consensual dispute resolution has its limits. On the adversary side: low value disputes are not always simple. ODR can be suitable for low value disputes if it can reduce costs, to the user and to the taxpayer, and on the condition that it keeps the complexity of the dispute at an acceptable level – neither over simple nor unnecessarily complex.  

·         Tier One of HMOC should provide Online Evaluation. This facility will help users with a grievance to classify and categorize their problem, to be aware of their rights and obligations, and to understand the options and remedies available to them.

·         Tier Two of HMOC should provide Online Facilitation. To bring a dispute to a speedy, fair conclusion without the involvement of judges, this service will provide online facilitators. Communicating via the Internet, these individuals will review papers and statements and help parties through mediation and negotiation. They will be supported where necessary, by telephone conferencing facilities. Additionally, there will be some automated negotiation, which are systems that help parties resolve their differences without the intervention of human experts.

·         Tier Three of HMOC should provide Online Judges – full-time and part-time members of the Judiciary who will decide suitable cases or parts of cases on an online basis, largely on the basis of papers submitted to them electronically as part of a structured process of online pleading. This process will again be supported, where necessary, by telephone conferencing facilities.

The proposal takes the insights from Hazel Genns Paths to Justice on the needs of people with justiciable problems into account. Genns research was replicated in the Netherlands by Ben van Velthoven and Marijke ter Voert and reported in the dispute resolution delta. This research and its later additions shows that often, information is enough to help people resolve their problem. Sometimes they need someone to help them. If that also fails, there is still the court of law.  

The report does not explicitly analyse the process of dispute resolution, perhaps because there was no judge or magistrate in the Group. Here is what I mean by analysis. Parties first discuss the problem between them. They both introduce information into the debate. Tier 1 can help them with new information suggesting how to resolve their problem. This information can be about ways to resolve problems, but also about legal rules and trends in case law. If they find a solution that satisfies them both, the problem is resolved. If not, they can then choose to use tier 2. In tier 2, the facilitator enters the arena. He or she can help the parties to introduce even more information about their side of the dispute. It is important that the information the parties used in Tier 1 is also still at hand. Next, all that information can be reduced to what is relevant for resolving the problem. Some negotiation or mediation may be useful to help parties find a solution. If that fails as well, the online judge in Tier 3 can decide the dispute with a judgment.

This brief description provides some indication for the way in which information technology can be leveraged to resolve disputes.

Back to my initial questions

Hazel Genns research taught us that the nature of the problem people have is an important determinant for the type of resolution they require. Consumer problems are resolved easily if the seller has an effective complaints procedure. Problems in long term relationships like family and labour problems are hard to resolve, but also hard to bear, which is an incentive to resolve them consensually. Problems with government agencies tend to be harder to resolve... Our own experience with the eKantonrechter, a simple, consensual court procedure for simple problems, shows that there seems to be little inherent demand for this type of procedure. Consensual dispute resolution has its limits. On the adversary side: low value disputes are not always simple. ODR can be suitable for low value disputes if it can reduce costs, to the user and to the taxpayer, and on the condition that it keeps the complexity of the dispute at an acceptable level – neither over simple nor unnecessarily complex. There is more to ODR than just an alternative to a face to face court hearing. When a dispute needs a fresh look at the merits of facts and rules, and possibly a new idea of the stakes involved, a face to face court hearing may still be the most effective way of resolving it. As remote communication becomes more mainstream and cheaper, remote hearings may also become more mainstream.

The eKantonrechter: direct digital court access for citizens

The Netherlands judiciary recently completed a digital procedure for everyday disputes. This blog explains how eKantonrechter was developed and implemented.

The procedure

The procedure is based on an existing provision, article 96 of the Code of Civil Procedure, giving court access to parties who want to put a dispute before a judge together. The procedure is consensual in the sense that parties agree  to put the dispute before the judge together. They can do so themselves, no legal representation is required. A judgment is guaranteed within eight weeks of filing. The disputes can be small claims of up to € 25.000, or labor, consumer or housing problems. There is usually an oral hearing, but the fixed, limited disposition time does not allow for hearing witnesses or otherwise thorough examination of the facts. 

Digital access

In part 4 of Technology for Justice, my book on improving justice with information technology, I have laid out some guidelines for web access to justice and courts. Communication should be based on understanding the information demands people have, given that they have a problem that needs to be resolved. Information needs to be understandable to people with an average level of education. The information provided needs to give people the confidence that if they follow the instructions, they will achieve results. 

Earlier experiment

Direct access to courts for citizens had been tried before. There was an earlier experiment, at least twenty years ago, to give citizens direct access to court. It involved a paper form that could be bought in a stationery shop, filled out, and sent to the court to file a claim. The court then summoned the other party, which was the beginning of a civil procedure. Judges struggled with the information people put in the form. Parties struggled with the complex procedural rules of an adversarial civil procedure, that were hard to explain and even harder to understand.

The new procedure

This time, the procedure was designed to start with a digital form. The parties, after agreeing to put their dispute before the court, each fill out a part of it. Because the procedure is consensual and not adversarial, the rules are less complex.  The procedure itself is conducted entirely over the internet, except for the hearing which is face to face in court. For authentication, parties log into the kiosk with DigiD, the Dutch government digital ID. For extra security, they get a text message with an access code. For firms, authentication works with eHerkenning, the government ID for legal entities. Lawyers log in with their Bar ID. One party takes the initiative, logs in to the judiciary's digital kiosk, and fills out the first part of the form. The system then provides a code, with which the other party can log in to this particular case. The other party then fills out the other half of the form, and submits it to court. The court then reviews the information for admissibility. As there is only one court hearing and the disposition time is limited, only simple cases can be admitted. After the dispute is admitted, parties can provide additional information and upload documents they want to present as evidence. The court fee is paid electronically as part of the submission process. Parties are also presented with optional time slots for the oral hearing. They can indicate when they are not available. The information from the forms is fed into the court’s case registration system and into the digital case file. The oral hearing is then set by the court. After the hearing, the judgment is uploaded into the digital case file.

Building digital access

My team, charged with designing and then building the new digital procedure, was determined to do better than the paper form. It was particularly important to get the forms right. We started with a workshop discussing the information the judges need to determine the merits of the case: what is the problem, what happened, did they attempt to resolve the dispute amicably, what is the claim, what evidence is available. We then designed different ways of asking questions lay people are capable of answering. Web technology offers ways of asking structured questions: yes/no, drop down lists, radio buttons. This information is accurate, and can be handled easily. However, it is rather poor in content. Asking for the story: what happened, what makes you think so, what is the background, provides much richer information, but it is not quite so manageable. We tested the different methods, on paper, with a test panel provided by the Dutch Consumers Union. We had devised fictional disputes, cases our panelists could use to fill out our forms: a contract case about a fading couch, another one about a labor dispute, and a tort case involving physical damage. This enabled us to check whether different types of disputes can be described adequately. With lots of feedback from the panel, we designed a digital form combining structured and unstructured questions. The panel came back, tested this form, and told us they needed more context and help in answering the questions.  We then added explanations and help information. For those who feel they cannot fill out the forms themselves, we added a link to the legal aid kiosk, the Juridisch Loket. The panel then came back to test the final product. They told us they could use the form easily. The eKanton procedure for citizens went live at the end of May 2014.

What comes next?

Devising a procedure is one thing, whether it meets the needs of those who seek justice is a different matter. Whether or how digital access to court is an improvement that will enhance access to justice is one of the major themes in the access to justice debate. It remains to be seen whether the eKanton procedure will be used by citizens. For the Dutch judiciary’s digitalization program, it was an opportunity to take a simple, existing procedure, digitalize it and learn about the process. This experience now feeds into the digitalization program for all other court procedures. More about those later. 

CTC2013 day 3: what's the big idea?

Bench and Chambers 2023 was the title of our judges' panel - Roberto Torres, David Harvey, Martin Gonzales and myself - on Thursday morning. Ten years ago, Facebook and Twitter did not exist yet and Money Claim On Line had only just started. So who can tell where things may be ten years from now? The panel speculated away, and tried to make some educated guesses on the way: no more court buildings, everyone, including jury members, will work from home, evidence will be displayed on the 3D screens we will all have in our homes by then. Brain imaging technology will change the way we determine guilt, big data (all those court decisions and other information) will bring performance analysis of courts and lawyers to the general public, and sentencing analysis to the courts. On line communication will be the norm, and the judges will be digital natives who can cope with all the technology seamlessly. Most of the court users will be self representing litigants. It was a great session, the audience was very engaged, and they just would not leave.

The big idea of CTC2013: e-filing, digital natives, SRLs
E-filing seems to be the big idea of this edition of CTC. It saves court staff capacity, and in some cases produced a 20% faster disposition, even with a double caseload compared to the baseline. The other big theme was the Digital Native. How to empower digital native court users was part of nearly every discussion, with the Self Representing Litigant (SRLs) a close second. Clearly, the future will be hard for tomorrow's lawyers, but also for tomorrow's courts. 
It is always a privilege to see where the discussion is going in the most technologically-experienced jurisdiction in the world. My impression is that some court systems in Europe are catching up quickly. I wish they would get together and exchange experience like the US courts do at CTC. Congratulations to the National Center for State Courts for yet another successful CTC.

CTC2013 Day 2: focusing on the users

On Wednesday morning, Karl Agen presented the results of a poll of the public's opinion of the courts. His slides are here. The report can be found here: http://www.ncsc.org/fundingjustice. People's idea of the courts as largely based on what they see on television. There are 73 different Law & Order shows on television right now. People associate courts with unnecessary lawsuits, inefficiency and bureaucracy. Advisory: customers want efficiency and respect at their point of contact with the courts, 73% think investment in new technology can make a difference, they want to do business with the courts the way they do with their banks, i.e. from home. 

In the afternoon, I was part of "the world's largest jury", in a trial to test display technology by the Center for Legal and Court Technology, led by prof. Fred Lederer. Our job was to decide whether, and if so, which of two people involved in some small scale road rage should be held responsible for an injury sustained by one of them. The test involved displaying a brick with alleged traces of blood and hair and a baseball bat with alleged traces of contact with the brick on a 2D screen, and on different types of 3D screens, from a 3D image camera. The members of the world's largest jury wore different types of 3D glasses. The jury voted by show of hands. I wondered whether the 3D projection made any difference to the outcome, but that was not the point of the exercise. 

Next, I attended what was more a class than a presentation, on e-discovery. This means that David Harvey and Daniel Garrie taught me a lot I did not yet know. Coming from a jurisdiction that does not have mandatory discovery, I look for those elements of this class that are relevant for handling electronic evidence in a more general sense, and for using electronic means to do so. 

 What you need to know may not be in the legible text of the document, but in its metadata. For instance, where an email was sent from, or when. Therefore, you want the document in native form. Lawyers also need to know their clients' business, including how they run their information services. Courts should be proactive in moving the e-discovery process forward, using case conferences and possible cost shifting. 

Methodologies include keyword searching using a white or blacklist, excluding duplicates, concept searching and predictive coding. The process needs to be geared by reasonableness and proportionality: is what is at stake worthe the effort and resources involved? Helpful: the New Zealand checklist, and model orders available in the 7th circuit of Northern California. The class was much more entertaining than can be gleaned from this very brief summary.

ctc2013 day 1:2 more or less effective discussions

Tuesday morning, the first education session in the tech for judges track. My colleague Martin Gonzales, federal judge from Denver, Co., speaks about the problems court users can have with e-filing. Clearly, we need to serve them as well as everyone else. The point of my own presentation is that courts and judges need to understand how they process information in their cases, in order to grasp what IT can do for them. Simplification will make legal protection available to more people, and the market for legal information is changing dramatically. 

The session by the Nebraska e-courts was a neat description of what it means to take small steps when developing IT in your court.

At lunch, with the judges panel to prepare our Thursday morning, 8:30 discussion on tech for judges in 2023, we hit it off right away with a discussion on sentencing guidelines and how to computerize them - for advisory purposes only, of course.

Flags here are at half mast after the Navy yard shooting. On television, discussions on how it could have been prevented follow the by now common pattern: how come agencies did not have the information that now turns out to have been available, and whether or not to have more gun control.

Next is a q and a-session on social media that I find hard to follow because it has the format of a game I don't know, the group discussions are not amplified and the light level in the conference room is too low to even see who is speaking. Therefore, what I pick up from this session is a little haphazard: Court staff are not allowed to make themselves known as such when using social media, and jurors can be held in contempt if they use social media while on jury duty. The central message, however, is clear: every court should have a social media policy. 

The final session for the day was about responding to the demand for disruptive technologies. This turned out to be an interesting discussion, mainly between court IT staff as far as I could tell. What challenges them most are things like the permanent shortage of bandwidth, iPads, and judges who expect their personal devices to be serviced by the court IT staff, in one case even on a Saturday. The term disruptive technology was used earlier by Richard Susskind, who identified ODR as a technology that disrupts the lawyer's traditional way of doing business. The most disruptive element I could glean from the discussion here are no doubt the judges, at least in the perception of their IT staff. Enough for the day!

CTC 2013 day 1: Ride the wave of change and go viral

day 1: ride the wave of change and go viral
CTC2013 opende with a keynote by Alec Ross, innovation adviser to Hillary Clinton and one of the whizkids on Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign. He pointed out some major trends: decentralization of power and loss of control. Those who are most adaptable to change can survive. Alec gave some interesting examples of the use of technology that took that context into account. The first was a project to increase crime reporting in drug-kartel-infested Northern Mexico. Denunzia Anonyma used encrypted sms messaging, and people started reporting crimes again using their cell phones. Next was the Icow app for dairy farmers in Kenya, used by the Maasai, an increasing their income by 30% by mapping cattle productivity. This app won a contest for the best African app.
Both these examples defy existing stereotypes of developing countries.
The 21st century is a terrible time to be a control freak. The way to go is to understand that loss of control and ride the wave, empowering digital natives, taking intelligent risks and be tolerant of mistakes. Last advice: give the naysayers credit, make everyone look good and share credit. If you do something that works, it will go viral.

CTC2013 preview

This blog left off in October 2011 after #CTC2011 ended. Today, as #CTC2013 is about to begin, it starts again. Meanwhile, technology has advanced.
This morning, my project at home had an important meeting. I participated from Washington, DC using Facetime on my Ipad. That was not possible in 2011 - well, not for me anyway. I think video communication will change the way we do court cases considerably in the years to come. As it gets cheaper, it may well become a means to provide more legal protection to more user groups for whom going to court is unaffordable right now.
Richard Susskind says the "high street law firm" does not have a future, it is not an affordable way of providing legal services. The future is not for corner shops, but for more supermarket-like setups. I wonder if that is also true for courts.
At CTC2013, I will be participating in an educational session on information technology for judicial officers. My talk will focus on how we process information, a topic largely overlooked in the  IT discussions. This session is part of a thread on IT for judicial officers. On Thursday, some of the speakers from this thread will do a panel discussion on tech for judges in 2023. I am still thinking about the themes to choose for this discussion, which will hopefully be interactive, since that is the added value of a panel.
So now, off to Baltimore! - and more in this blog tomorrow!

A walk around the exhibition hall: lots of vendors selling lots of case management systems, now with e-filing integrated. There are firms offering telephone court appearance for a fee, interesting. The first evidence camera using 3-D imagery is here. Everyone’s favourite, the silicone rubber keyboard that is completely silent, is also dishwasher safe. The crew from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (#ICTY) consider ordering 50 for their courtrooms. I want one at home, too! I test a check-in kiosk for jurors together with someone who turns out to be the CIO for the courts in San Jose, California – Silicon Valley, that is. No, that location is not an advantage. The constituency is so connected, the courts are not, and there is a big problem.

Wednesday, October 5 2011

This morning’s keynote sounded innocuous enough: Ending the Revolving Door of Justice: How Technology Helped One Judge Reengineer His Court. Therefore, I almost gave it a miss. That would have been a mistake, for judge and former public defender Steven Leifman of Miami-Dade county in Florida had an extremely interesting and moving story on how to divert people with a mental disorder from the criminal justice system into the health care circuit. More and more people in the criminal justice chain turn out to have a serious mental disorder. Keeping them in the prison system is not going to help, but sometimes a little mental health care does the job, at much lower cost. In the present climate, and in the U.S. context more generally, that is an unusual topic. My favourite quote: nothing makes a conservative liberal more quickly than being broke. Leifmans point was that diverting people is much cheaper than keeping them in prison. Where the technology came in was to provide the metrics on people with a mental disorder and how they moved through the criminal justice system, and at what cost. He also pointed out that judges have a moral authority they can use to raise issues. And finally, the observation that more veterans from Afghanistan are now committing suicide than there are casualties on the ground in Afghanistan. His program tries to identify them and give them the care they need, so they do not end up in the US criminal justice system.

Tuesday, October 4 2011

This morning, David Pogue, technology reviewer for the New York Times, opened CTC 2011 with a keynote on Disruptive Technology. He introduced the audience to an awful lot of really cool apps and speculated on a few of their effects. It was very entertaining. The video will be on the NCSC web site soon. It will be well worth watching. Click here for more. Pogue’s talk included some of his songs on Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Click here for a sample from YouTube.
The panel on Taking Measuring Court Performance Seriously took place right after lunch. The panel was originally conceived as an inernational, comparative discussion on factors affecting the level of serious performance measuring. For the predominantly U.S. audience, the format had been modified. Ron Bowmaster of the Utah courts and Craig Burlingame of the Massachusetts courts talked about their experiences with measuring court performance in their court systems. My role was to provide a wider, more judicial perspective using some of the Dutch courts’ experience and observations from other courts systems I have worked with. Invariably, output-based budgeting attracts attention, and this time was no different. The message, however, was to ensure quality measuring to counterbalance too much attention to quantitative aspects. The session was moderated by Richard Schauffler of the National Center.
The other highlight of the day was the session presenting a study on videoconferencing in Australia – and some courts in Europe by Anne Wallace. It shows there is much more to videoconferencing in courts than meets the eye, so to speak. The use of technology changes communication, and therefore the understanding of the statements being made.
The technology exhibition opened at 5.00. Vendors are offering case management systems, these days most of them are integrated solutions. Some of them remain vague when asked in how many courts their solutions have been implemented. The coolest thing I saw was a completely silent keyboard made of a rubbery, silicone material, Completely waterproof, and completely silent. It would be a great asset to any courtroom where keyboards are used to input information. And of course, there is the hunt for the coolest gadgets distributed by the vendors. In these days of crisis, the booty is small. A pen that lights up, a 2 gigabyte usb-drive, a yoyo that does not work very well. Anyway, more tomorrow.

Monday, October 3 2011

The 2011 Court Technology Conference starts tomorrow, Tuesday October 4. This is where I restart the daily blog.
Last week, I was at the e-justice seminar and workshop by the Judicial Studies Center of the Americas, CEJA, in Santiago, Chile. It was their first seminar on courts and IT. Participants from Brazil, Costa Rica and Chile gave an overview of developments in their judiciaries. Brazil now has a Judicial Council, and it is doing a project in electronic work processes. About 600 different work processes are being supported electronically. The system is already operational in two courts, with about 100 users. Courts participate on a voluntary basis, and about 55% of them actually do so. Costa Rica, by far the most IT-equipped judiciary of Latin America, is experimenting with notifications by email and fax.
At CEJA’s request I gave an overview of the findings in my book. Francesco Contini of IRSIG in Italy compared UK’s Money Claim On Line, Austrian Elektronischer Rechtsverkehr and French e-barreau on the point of development strategy. The lessons are to keep things simple, use standard components, learn from experience, build on what you already have, and not to over-regulate things.
The workshop the next day was on CEJA’s plan for an index of judicial services. It is still very much in development.

Thursday September 24
This morning, a very interesting session on IT-supported self-help for self-representing litigants. What was still quite experimental two years ago is now becoming mainstream. The heart of it is the A2J author technology developed by Chicago-Kent Law School. It supports guiding users through question-and-answer sessions and it has reduced the time it takes for them to find something by more than half. The other place to go to on this topic is www.probono.net. It hosts support services for self-representing litigants, of which there are many right now, and expectations are that until 2013, even more people will be involved in lawsuits because of the economic crisis. www.nycourthelp.gov shows what the courts in New York State have done in the field of virtual self-help: on line forms that make parties think through their case, feed the case management system and generate a pleadings document, for eviction cases at first and now also for other frequently occurring cases.

Wednesday September 23
What is a good methodology for measuring judicial corruption? This was the question the Chief Justice of Iraq asked after my presentation on IT and Judicial Reform, this afternoon at CTC in Denver. Richard Van Duizend and Dan Hall of the National Center for State Courts and I presented on the role of IT in judicial reform in different parts of the world. NCSC has cooperated in the consortium that developed an international benchmarking system for court excellence. It is available on the Web at www.courtexcellence.com. Courts and court systems can evaluate themselves on a number of relevant areas, as a first step in an assessment and reform process. My own talk was a very brief overview of the conclusions of my dissertation. They concern the significance of court and case management systems for effective performance, and timely delivery in particular,, the role of the Internet in the courts’ shadow function as the guardian of the law, and on how to use IT as a means to reduce opportunities for corruption. Dan Hall, finally, gave an example of the courts in Minnesota here in the U.S. where they had used IT to reduce a need for staffing.
Actually, since the state courts are all losing funding because of the economic crisis, the theme of reducing staff by using IT runs through this conference. And although these is some advocacy for using the crisis for creative solutions, those solutions are few and far between. Incidentally, the answer to the Chief Justice’s question is that there are no accepted ways of measuring judicial corruption. There is the possibility of a public survey asking people about their perception of actual corruption, and there is the Transparency International Bribe Payers Index, but that does not target judges specifically. During question time, someone asked where she could buy my book. Not just yet, but ah, if only my publisher could hear this! I just realized I can now use my twitterpage @doryontour to announce publication, when it finally comes.

Tuesday afternoon: a discussion with other judges sharing ideas about the most pressing problems with regard to IT. My colleagues are refreshingly honest. In Japan, scanning is problematic because character recognition is not accurate enough for Japanese writing. Somewhere in the US, a case management systems is being developed for a six-judge court. All six are allowed to keep their own individual way of registering cases. The system is getting very expensive and it is taking a long time to build, and so it is technically out of date before it is fully implemented. E-filing is not sufficiently standardized to allow attorneys to file with different courts. Case management systems need to be replaced because the functionality is no longer enough. But how to make sure to get the right replacement? Another court has set up a self-help center for self-representing litigants, or pro-ses as the are called here. And then there is the court in Texas that has recently received some IT toys but does not yet know what to do with them.

Tuesday September 22
CTC2009 started officially this morning. There was a special welcome for the chief justice of Iraq, who is here with a delegation. The keynote speech was delivered by Ari Shapiro of National Public Radio, mainly about how courts can ensure serious reporting about justice can be done without extreme effort in the part of the press. With examples of Twitter, Facebook and some blogs, notably http://www.scotusblog.com/ he demonstrated how courts can ensure accurate information about what goes on in their courts: announcing important opinions being handed down (in Europe we would call that the pronouncement of a court decision) on Twitter that those interested can subscribe to, with links to the original documents, would be very helpful, Shapiro said. He cited an example of crowdsourcing on http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/. He closed by quoting Chief Justice John Roberts who, during the first phase of the nominations for a new justice earlier this year, confided that a new justice “is like an arranged marriage, you find someone you don’t know very well on your doorstep, and you have to live with them for the rest of your life”. Ari Shapiro has a page on http://www.npr.org/.

On Monday September 21 in the afternoon, the Federal Court in Denver hosted a meeting on the use of technology in the courtroom, and what courts’needs are. Marcia Krieger, the judge presiding over the meeting, remarked how in her courtroom, all participants in a trial were more or less arranged in a circle, which makes for more cooperative, less adversarial attitudes. This court has not gone completely paperless yet, since files still go to the appeal court on paper. Also, the record is still produced by a live court reporter, and not by audio or video recording. Marcia has three screens on her bench: on displaying evidence: one displaying the court record as it is being entered, and one for managing proceedings. The court does use remote connectivity to include witnesses, lawyers and other who are in far away locations in the proceedings, by phone or by video. It also uses an electronic organizer developed by the southern district of Texas, that has merged access to case documents, notes, instant messaging to law clerks, transcript access (Marcia did not manage displaying it, however) and access to Westlaw. In the ensuing discussion, there was a plea for more bandwidth on the remote technology. Another issue that is becoming more prominent is that of jurors using I-phones and social networking like Twitter from the jury box, creating a risk of mistrial and loss of resources. A plea for standard technical assistance in the courtroom was heard as well, so the judge does not have to manage all the controls, and summon assistance from elsewhere if something does not work.

Coffee meeting with Susanne Hoogwater, who has her own firm in visualizing legal information. We met through LinkedIn, which is saying something about Web 2.0. We talked for nearly two hours, about her work and about mine and my research. Our common ground is accessible legal information. We agreed the potential of the Internet as identified by Richard Susskind: helping informal settlement by providing “golden nuggets of legal information” will apply mainly to people with at least some secondary education. Legal institutions will have to package their information in such a way that it is easily understood by those who have some secondary education. Putting the law on line is not going to help. Those with a really low level of education will still need someone to sort out their shoe boxes of papers, so to speak. We also agreed that confidence is an important component of the communication about legal information. In my research, I have scored web sites for effectiveness, and that includes whether the reader can be confident that, if they act as instructed, will get the result they are after. Thank you, Susanne, for a copy of your book Beeldtaal voor Juristen, about graphic models for making legal information more accessible, and for an inspiring morning.

We - well, I do - forget how quickly technological developments are changing the way we live. In 2001, with CTC in Baltimore, Wim and I did a camping tour along the East coast of the U.S. We read our email in the local public libraries, a great free service. Eight years later, we travel with our notebook computers and have free wifi in all motels. We still go camping, and then we just park near a motel for wifi service. Clearly, we do not make electronic payments over open wireless, but otherwise it is very handy. There will be free wifi at CTC in Denver too.
Wim keeps track of his photo sales, and I have composed my presentation for CTC while we were in Yellowstone National Park which does not provide any kind of connectivity whatsoever. But I sat in a lobby with a view of Old Faithful Geyser for a couple of hours and moved and pasted my slides. As I closed my notebook, Old Faithful gracefully erupted. Awesome.
We also bought a satellite navigation system (a tom-tom) to experiment with while driving. It was $ 129 at WalMart. And as things go, the function we use most is not the one it was designed for, but something else: that of keeping track of maximum speed. It shows you the maximum speed and beeps when you drive too fast. It also finds us hotels and restaurants. We will bring it home and download the European maps. However, we still have lots of paper maps and would not know how to travel without them.

CTC

The 2009 Court Technology Conference will be held in Denver, Colorado September 22-24. Check out the program here.
I attended CTC for the first time in 1999, in Los Angeles, and have attended all of them (five in all) since then. They are organized by the National Center for State Courts in the U.S., and they are always an interesting mix of experience sharing, highlighting new issues and reactions to present-day problems.
This year's program focuses on keeping things going in difficult times, but it also has Ari Shapiro National Public Radio's justice expert in the opening keynote. There is always the election of the best court web site. I meet friends and colleagues at the special interest group for judges. Another of my favorite items is Fred Lederer's court technology lab.
My plan is to do a blog on the conference every day. My twitterpage @doryontour will announce the program items during the course of the day. So, keep coming back here, and also let me know what you think by sending comments.

One of my projects right now is to think about IT in courts in 2020. The Dutch judiciary is doing some brain storming on the future, and this will be input for some of the sessions. In 2002, we made some projections about court IT in 2008. So I started out by revisiting our 2002 projections for 2008 to see what had been realized. Workplace on line access to sources of legal information (jurisprudence, laws and legislation history) for judges and court staff, and nationwide coordination the case load of large criminal cases are both a reality in 2008. The plan for a single case registration system? Nope! Practically all the other projections depended on the new case registration system being in place, so the list of successes is short.
Dutch courts are not at the forefront of IT development in Europe, according to the latest report from CEPEJ. The Commission Européenne pour l'Efficacité de la Justice has gathered information about court operations since 2002. The results show how a few countries have actually managed to leverage IT to transform their court processes: the UK, Finland and Austria are examples. The second echelon are able to use the Internet for informal email and for finding information, but not to interact with court users. Interaction would require changes in processes that are hard to achieve. Right now, we can only speculate about the reasons: formal legal requirements (can they be deformalized?), security needs (is that high security level really necessary?), lack of experience with electronic information processing (do we need more experimentation?). And most importantly: how can we learn from the others?
Keep watching this space, these issues will be explored here.