RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Contribution from OXCI project

[jmessing <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

I agree with Roger and Rolly that electronic service by the courts or EFSP's is a probable incentive to lawyers, depending of course on how it is handled. I understand "service" in this context to exclude the initial step of filing of a complaint and service of a summons, which presents different issues.

Service of paper pleadings by mail is a thankless chore to most lawyers. Eliminating it may immediately cut down the overhead of printing and mailing such documents by law firms, if no additional fees or very nominal ones are charged for the service. 

In my days of running the Pima County Justice Court small claims project, I was impressed with the return receipt service of process that the court effectuated by postal mail for the nominal sum of $3.50 per case. The litigants were not lawyers, admittedly, but the convenience and efficiency of the process was greatly appreciated by the public and went far in helping the popularity of the court, with or without electronic filing.

Service effectuated directly between lawyers can also generate a most frustrating class of dispute that service through the court or an EFSP may eliminate. Without telling tales out of school, consider the anectode of the lawyer who is often suspected of using the stamp of a postage meter in a mysterious way to make it appear that a document was sent by US mail earlier than it really was. Or its cousin that relates the practices of a crafty lawyer who is known in a community for turning off the fax at times to stymie the use of faxed service of documents by an opponent. I imagine the use of junk email filters could be the next generation of devices lawyers could creatively put to use in such situations. Taking service out of the hands of the lawyers and putting it with the courts or EFSP's could itself be a big selling point to lawyers who have grown weary of such practices. 

I also appreciate the fine efforts of Mr. Cabral and his group in effectuating a very difficult task. I think the report was extremely professional and well-done.

A common thread that I extract from the two previous comments is whether we are in a position yet to give a complete and meaningful response about OXCI. As Rolly points out, we do not have the schema, and the report had to fashion a crude prototype using XML Spy for its working assumptions. Also, the CMS-API workgroup has not completed a piece that OXCI requires and assumes will be in place, which is the CMS-API. I do not blame anyone for this occurence. Some of the problems are hopefully being worked out. In the absence of  the API, I can only guess if the overall system as envisioned can be made to work as intended. 

I am also unclear if the methods already used by some vendors will be facilitated or hindered by the envisioned architecture. I think their frank input is indispensible, and I would prefer to hear the results of Dallas Powell's interoperability subcommittee on the differences in filing techniques between various vendors before finalizing any evaluation of the OXCI study. It seems that BearingPoint.com has certain methods that are being used in Texas; Tybera has others that are used in Utah, still others may be used by Mo Abdulaziz' court in Arizona; and there may be others from LexisNexis in Colorado. Perhaps the cataloging of the similarities and differences will better arm us with specifics as a basis for a meaningful response to the OXCI group.




-----Original Message-----
From: Winters, Roger [mailto:Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV]
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 9:42 AM
To: 'Tom.Clarke@courts.wa.gov'; 'rlchambers@smithcurrie.com'; 'legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org'
Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Contribution from OXCI project


At Tom's suggestion, I'll speak up about how the "Standards for Electronic Filing Processes" treats service of filings. In the section on "Court Rules," "Standard 1.2A Service of Filings on Opposing Parties" (pages 34-35 of the February 26, 2003 version) identifies electronic service as an "important incentive for lawyers' use of electronic filing." Further, it says "the efficiency of the legal process will be enhanced by having service performed by the electronic filing process." 



The corresponding "Functional Standard 3.14: Service and Notice," (page 91) in Subfunction 3.14.1 notes that providing this service is optional, not mandatory: "It is optional for each electronic filing system to provide for electronic notice and service. When a court opts for this functionality, the system must provide a proof of service record and a record of who is served electronically and who must still be served traditionally."



The document from which this information is taken can be found at http://www.ncsconline.org/D_Tech/Standards/Standards.htm#ElectronicFilingProcesses. 



Though not directly involved with the group who have been developing OXCI, I will say I didn't expect OXCI to embody many, if any, of the optional functions and processes, including the electronic service function. This is not to say it isn't as important as Rolly indicates. In fact, his calling it out helps me understand even more clearly how service and related functions (e.g., document exchanges not directly related to a filing) are probably going to be needed if we are to get substantial law firm participation in our e-filing systems.



Regards,



Roger



Roger Winters

Electronic Court Records Manager

King County
Department of Judicial Administration

516 Third Avenue, E-609 MS: KCC-JA-0609

Seattle, Washington 98104

V: (206) 296-7838 F: (206) 296-0906

roger.winters@metrokc.gov



-----Original Message-----
From: Tom.Clarke@courts.wa.gov [mailto:Tom.Clarke@courts.wa.gov] 
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 8:22 AM
To: rlchambers@smithcurrie.com; legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Contribution from OXCI project



Rolly,



I don't want to speak for MTG, but I do know something about the intent of what they submitted.



One of the problems with the OXCI project is that they don't want to set standards, they also don't want to do things that are obviously undesirable from an architectural viewpoint, and they don't want to be any more incompatible with projects building on CF 1.1 than necessary.  MTG attempted to compromise by absolutely minimizing the changes necessary to get from Court Filing 1.1 to a schema that is consistent with a web services approach to messaging.  We jokingly called this "Light Blue" because we knew the TC would want to go further with the real Blue.  Specifically, you would probably want to take better advantage of schema features, as you propose below, at the expense of backward compatibility with CF 1.1.



I don't think anyone involved with OXCI envisions implementing service outside of the core architecture of Legal XML transactions.  If that is not clear from the document, then we will need to clarify that for potential OXCI vendors.  I believe an approach implementing service and other notice types through the core component set over the Internet, as opposed to separate noticing via email, is recommended by the COSCA/NACM national standard for e-filing.  If I'm wrong about this, others involved in creating that standard should speak up.



Jim Cabral from MTG is the actual author of the document, so he can better respond to your specific suggestions.



-----Original Message-----
From: Chambers, Rolly [mailto:rlchambers@smithcurrie.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 7:55 PM
To: Electronic Court Filing Technical Committeee
Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Contribution from OXCI project



I commend MTG and its contribution to the TC of the OXCI Electronic Filing Manager Architecture. The design decisions have been thoughtfully considered and sound choices have been made.



I have one question/comment regarding the architectural piece and a handful of comments/thoughts concerning the proposed Court Filing XML schema.



The Architecture focuses on filings with a court appropriately enough, but it was not clear how or whether the architecture also supports the service of filings by a filer on other parties or their attorneys. Procedural rules require me, as a lawyer, to send (i.e. serve) other parties in a case with copy of pleadings, motions, or other filings that I submit to a court. Does the OXCI architecture support this service function or does it assume that lawyers will submit filings to a court electronically via applications implementing the proposed architecture but then serve copies of the filings on each other by some other means such as regular mail, hand-delivery, or email?



A related question concerns whether the OXCI architecture supports the service on other parties or their attorneys of documents that are not filed with a court such as discovery (interrogatories, requests for production of documents, deposition notices, offers of judgment, etc.).



The Court Filing XML schema apparently was generated by the DTD to XML schema feature of XML Spy. Like similar DTD to XML schema applications, the result is a fairly decent XML schema. However, the resulting XML schema can be substantially improved and made more useful by modest editing to add features available in XML schemas but not available in DTDs. Providing for the following in the proposed XML schema would be useful:



XML namespaces - the proposed XML schema has no default or targetNamespace. An XML schema "best practice" is to declare the targetNamespace as the default namespace. This approach eliminates problems with element name collisions and other problems when one schema, such as the Court Filing XML schema, is used with another, such as the SOAP schema. Creating an XML namespace for the proposed Court Filing XML schema would improve its utility significantly.



ANY content elements - the DTD to XML schema converter changed elements in the DTD having ANY content (e.g. administrativeLaw, civil, domesticRelations, etc.), which can contain any of the other elements declared in the DTD, to elements having mixed content, which can contain text and specifically declared elements. The mixed content elements in the proposed XML schema, however, contain no declared elements. Thus, filings containing an element within <civil/> will be valid against the Court Filing DTD, but not against the proposed XML schema. The wildcard component of XML schema is capable of providing substantially the same function as ANY content in a DTD. Changing the "empty" mixed content elements in the proposed Court Filing XML schema to use XML schema wildcards would make the schema more equivalent to the DTD.



Enumerated element values - XML schema allow the declaration of enumerated values for elements in addition to attributes. Many of the elements (hairColor, eyeColor, race, etc.)  in the Court Filing 1.1 DTD have required data values. Including such required data values as enumerated element values in the proposed schema would prevent problems that might occur if an element in a filing fails to contain the data value required by the Court Filing 1.1 spec.



Datatyping - one of the major advantages of XML schema over DTDs is datatyping. There are built-in data types available in XML schema for date, time, integer, decimal, and others. It also is possible to declare datatypes for data items such as zip codes or telephone numbers. The proposed Court Filing XML schema uses only the string data type, but might be made more useful if other XML data types were used where appropriate.



I again commend MTG's contribution. Thanks for soliciting and considering these suggestions.



Rolly Chambers 

-----Original Message----- 
From: John Greacen 
Sent: Mon 3/10/2003 6:16 PM 
To: Electronic Court Filing Technical Committeee 
Cc: 
Subject: [legalxml-courtfiling] Contribution from OXCI project

I enclose a zipped file containing a report from MTG for OXCI including a series of architectural recommendations for the OXCI product and draft schemas for court filing and query and response.  The court filing schema incorporates ebXML messaging and the elements from the current version of the JXDDS.  Those are two of the objectives we have set for ourselves for Electronic Court Filing "Blue."  OXCI is contributing these work products to this Technical Committee to use as we see fit.  OXCI would also appreciate feedback on the architectural piece and on the schemas.



John M. Greacen

Greacen Associates, LLC

HCR 78, Box 23

Regina, New Mexico 87046

505-289-2164

505-780-1450 (cell)








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