Court Filing document: status of subcommittee work Issues to be addressed

[Diane.Lewis@usdoj.gov]

I have some concerns given the Atlanta Court Filing meeting notes.  I would like to have a discussion with Subcommittee members via the list initially then follow-up with a conference call in early June.

I plan to give a presentation at the next court filing meeting and court filing document work will be addressed from the federal perspective during that presentation.

i am turning several points noted in the Atlanta meeting notes as issues for this subcommittee to discussion in depth

Issue #1: Attachments?  as part of the court filing envelope and document attachments (entities) associated to the XML court document...
What are the scenarios for attachments from a strictly authoring/practitioner stand point?

Federal attorneys during practice find that judges what to be able to view simultaneously both the newly filed court document and any document referenced in the content of the newly filed court document.  The hyperlink concept.. which is familiar to practitioners and judges.

Issue#2: does a signature apply to the attachments... the whole issue of granularity of non-repudiation needs to be discussed.  there are technical solutions readily available and XML standards that can apply digital hash...
what makes sense from a court document authoring/use perspective?

"Matt MacKenzie, a techie, recently provided this insight to the contracts TC..
"ebXML Mesaging -- a message may be composed of 1 or more MIME parts, the first being the ebXML envelope, the rest being payloads.  each payload is referenced in a manifest within the ebXML envelope using an XLink syntax. When the message is signed, a has is taken of the payloads, and is then signed within the envelope.  Using this mechanism, we can tell is a message or any of tis parts has been changed since transmission (or in your case, since the contract was executed)."

Issue#3: Certificate of Service and Return of Service... We need a concept from the court document point of view

Issue#4: Given the current implementations of digital technologies in the the legal community... there are assumptions regarding presentation of document content already accepted.    It is a matter of stated policies, procedures and trust between the legal parties....   our subcommittee needs to determine a strategy for a court document standard...   
the use of the XSLT standard may be thought about

Issue#5:  Court Filing and Court Document on equal footing... with regard to LegalXML member section .. Court Document is a component of the Justice/Legal process.... not necessarily a BLOB ... court document can be intelligent...

Issue#6:  form-based court document vs free text document.... 
i think we can benefit from discussion in the contract member section...

i look forward to learning your detailed views on the matters listed above.  diane