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

["Winters, Roger" <Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV>]

I have always expressed a clear idea that every document is, among other
things, a container of data elements that include the data elements
captured (traditionally) by a clerk by reading the document and
re-typing the information into a CMS of some sort. It is that re-typing
by the clerk of DATA THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN THE FILING that needs to be
eliminated.

It does not help explain the situation when this desire is characterized
as shifting the Clerk's work to the attorney, making the attorney do the
Clerk's data entry, fulfilling an "almost insatiable" demand for data by
the court (and Clerk), etc. 

I have personally witnessed the process of building pattern forms in our
state. Without data entry issues in mind, the committee (mostly
attorneys) created templates (usually in an outline format) that call
for the user to put certain data items into certain spaces in response
to a question (dictated by something in the statute) and have other
sections that are intended for the user to write out an explanation,
description, argumentation, persuasive rhetoric, etc. -- the sort of
thing I understand that some lawyers are said to be fearing coming under
threat when they are specifically asked to call out data elements for
labor-saving and efficiency purposes. In pattern forms, I have seen many
instances where the section heading is "Other," with the expectation the
filer can expound indefinitely to supply anything otherwise thought
needed to persuade the court or jury. 

What we care about are the specific data elements that we have workers
locating, reading, re-typing (and regularly making human errors, which
adds the work steps of discovering the error, correcting it, cleaning up
consequences from it, etc.), verifying/reviewing, and so forth. Where
these data elements can be specifically called for to be placed in a
certain location in a template, it seems to me, the result could be that
the data element in that location could be automatically tagged so the
Clerk's systems need only locate the appropriate tags and repurpose the
data elements associated with them. In other words, it should be
possible to have the tagging accomplished without calling on the lawyer
to become or feel she is a data-entry clerk for the court. 

This (pattern form or template) is actually an implementation issue. By
focusing on implementation questions, those who oppose telling attorneys
to use a certain standard format - rather than a 100% free-form (easier
to do) argument without concern about how specific data elements will be
found and used in Court systems - avoid the basic issue. The basic issue
is whether we shouldn't use XML markup and NIEM/GJXDM type
standardization of data element tagging to ENABLE automation of
processes of capturing data elements needed in court CMS's or otherwise.


The reason many came to LegalXML from the courts (and most of the people
at the beginning were from courts and clerk's offices) was specifically
to find ways to automate such data capture/repurposing processes now
done manually. Now we have had several years' work on the envelope to
pass a non-XML document to the clerk, where the work for the clerk
remains essentially to read a paper (on a screen, not a printout) to
locate data elements to be retyped into a target system. Nothing we have
done so far (with the exception of work Rex has done with child support
enforcement documents in Georgia) has really tapped the assumed vast
power of standardized XML tagging to save courts literally millions of
keystroke actions (a unit of labor) per day. We have not started to work
with documents that are truly digital - we are still using XML only to
promote interoperability in DELIVERING documents that have had their
digital qualities stripped from them through printing/scanning or
through locking them up in a PDF format so they really, really look like
a traditional paper filing. 

The time has come to give serious attention to this additional,
potentially more complex and controversial dimension of using XML
tagging in legal documents (not just court filings). Why? Because it is
in this area that the truly great leaps forward in document processing
and in the efficient provision of information to support the work of our
courts can be found. 

I personally would agree to a parameter that said that the imposition of
new data entry tasks on E-Filers should be minimized, allowable only
when justified clearly and when no alternative can be found and where
the data elements are needed in service to the court. I would no more
welcome the tacking on of tasks to drive attorneys back to paper filings
than would anyone else. That would be totally self-defeating for clerks
of court -- none of whom have advocated doing that. (I believe the
spectre of IMPOSED DATA ENTRY is only an argument saying lawyers don't
want to modify the way they do certain things; nevertheless, as those of
us who have lived through revised court rules, implementations of new
ways of doing business, introduction of pattern forms for many purposes,
lawyers have always adapted when it has been called for. And, it is
their staff, by and large, who have done the work and who have the savvy
to work out the adaptations.)

The above is not a policy statement of King County's - it is my personal
effort to communicate and explain what I think is a very important part
of the work of our Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee - a part
that has not yet been seriously undertaken, but for which the need
remains.

Thanks for asking...

Sincerely,

Roger

Roger Winters
Program and Project Manager
King County
Department of Judicial Administration
516 Third Ave. E-609 MS:KCC-JA-0609
Seattle, WA 98104
V: (206) 296-7838
F: (206) 296-0906
roger.winters@metrokc.gov
 
-----Original Message-----
From: O'Brien, Robert [mailto:Robert.OBrien@cas-satj.gc.ca] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 4:06 PM
To: legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Charter: Mention Marked-Up Documents

"These should be extracted from free text if possible by allowing text
to
flow around the tags for these data points."

Yes, I think you've got it John. Roger, do you see it thusly?

-----Original Message-----
From: John Messing [mailto:jmessing@law-on-line.com] 
Sent: January 9, 2007 7:04 PM
To: O'Brien, Robert
Cc: legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Charter: Mention Marked-Up Documents

I distill from this exchange the following:

Data points for extraction must be established and in many cases made
mandatory.

These should be extracted from free text if possible by allowing text to
flow around the tags for these data points.

The remaining free text should be stored as needed for future reference.

Sounds like a CMS and DMS to me.

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Charter: Mention Marked-Up
> Documents
> From: "O'Brien, Robert" <Robert.OBrien@cas-satj.gc.ca>
> Date: Tue, January 09, 2007 3:11 pm
> To: <legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org>
> 
> 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