RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Charter: Mention Marked-Up Documents

["O'Brien, Robert" <Robert.OBrien@cas-satj.gc.ca>]

I don't disagree at all with John M: we must walk a fine line / create a
balance between the Courts' sometimes almost insatiable need for data
for its CMS vs. the breaking point of e-filers for the amount of data
entry that can reasonably be expected of them with their filings ---
lest they simply revert to what they perceive as less onerous paper
filings. Also agree with John re: maintaining the lawyer's look and feel
of his document. It's one reason many e-filing installations opt for PDF
as the submitted document format, to lock down counsel's presentation.

What I believe Roger and I are suggesting is that there is still ample
opportunity to PAINLESSLY extract data from e-filers via marked-up
documents. Let me give the breakdown of a typical example of a docket
entry for an Affidavit document:

Affidavit of: John Smith
Sworn on: January 3, 2007
Before: R.H. Talbot, Commissioner of Oaths
Filed on behalf of: the Defendant ABC Co. 
In Opposition to: Motion for Particulars of counterclaim
Attached: Exhibits A-F 
Submitted pursuant to: special order of Judge Jones allowing extension
of time to respond until January 9, 2009

Currently, we are not getting all of that information from the legal
envelope itself. And that may be fine, because if the e-filer had to
answer additional onscreen data fields --- in addition to having already
entered it when he or she typed up the document itself --- then our
e-filer might just walk away and return to the paper filing world where
no one seems to bother him so.

But this standard information the Courts crave is already all there
within the Affidavit document itself, just waiting to be harvested. It
is important to stress this point: it is ALREADY there, albeit in free
form and perhaps scattered about the doc. 

By marking up the document to contain a few tags that would convey this
info to us for parsing, the Court and Clerk's Office would see a
completely automated docket entry creation - the Holy Grail from their
perspective. 

Yet the attorney is still free to insert all sorts of free-form of
argument as John rightly contends. The few strategic tags that the
Courts would require would not interfere with counsel's creativeness nor
with the overall presentation of his document.


-----Original Message-----
From: John Messing [mailto:jmessing@law-on-line.com] 
Sent: January 8, 2007 9:25 PM
To: O'Brien, Robert
Cc: john@greacen.net; Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV;
legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Charter: Mention Marked-Up Documents

I think the needs of lawyers need to acknowledged. The filings for them
are ways to influence a judge's or jury's decision. If they feel put
into a strait-jacket for extraneous reasons, they may feel that
electronic filing is an obstacle, rebel and complain to the judges. A
way to prevent such an outcome, which I think would be disasterous for
electronic court filing, is to assure that free-form of argument is
available somewhere within a document. It may not even be persistent
data from the perspective of the court administration, but it is a
matter of record and will require preservation nontheless. It could be
stored as a single blob or as some kind of character data. But it will
need to be included, to avoid real trouble, IMHO.


> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Charter: Mention Marked-Up
> Documents
> From: "O'Brien, Robert" <Robert.OBrien@cas-satj.gc.ca>
> Date: Mon, January 08, 2007 7:09 pm
> To: <Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV>,
> <legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org>
> Cc: <john@greacen.net>
> 
> As a fellow representative of the Court User domain, I wholeheartedly
> endorse Roger's sentiments. Many Court staff and managers don't even
> want to hear about e-filing unless it will save them work (e.g. the
area
> of case management system data entry). 
> 
> We must try to leverage more from e-filing in this regard.
> 
> Robert O'B
> Courts Administration Service 
> Ottawa Canada
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV [mailto:Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV] 
> Sent: December 24, 2006 8:34 PM
> To: legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org
> Cc: john@greacen.net
> Subject: [legalxml-courtfiling] Charter: Mention Marked-Up Documents
> 
> Hello, John, and members of the List,
> 
> In perusing the draft revised Charter, I have realized we haven't
> stressed that it is a goal of the TC to develop XML documents that
would
> be marked up in such a way as to automate data extraction and
eliminate
> duplicative data entry for court filings. Accordingly, I propose that
> the draft Charter revision be amended to include language such as:
> 
> "the TC intends to develop techniques and principles for creating XML
> legal documents for the purpose of data capture and re-use without
> manual re-entry, across a broad spectrum of uses, including court
> filings."
> 
> I hope others will endorse this added purpose and, if anyone has
better
> language, please offer it. 
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Roger
> 
> Roger Winters
> King County