RE: [courtfiling-doc] Breaking Court Document out of Court Filing

[jkeane <jik@jkeane.com>]

Very interesting and valid insight, John. There are many legal documents
beyond contracts and pleadings. It makes a lot of sense for a committee to
address not just these two common sub-species but also legal forms, Wills,
articles of incorporation, trust instruments and other legally binding
documents.

The proponents should prepare a charter to trigger a 90 day discussion
period on the scope of a new TC.
That is also an excellent recruiting tool.

Jim Keane

James I. Keane
JKeane.Law.Pro
20 Esworthy Terrace
North Potomac MD 20878
301-948-4062 F: 301-947-1176 (N.B.: NEW FAX NUMBER)
www.jkeane.com <http://www.jkeane.com>


-----Original Message-----
From: jmessing [mailto:jmessing@law-on-line.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 11:13 AM
To: courtfiling-doc@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [courtfiling-doc] Breaking Court Document out of Court Filing


I understand and appreciate the concern about retaining control within the
CourtFiling TC over the standards that relate strictly to court documents.

However, there may be two levels here.

First, presenting a legal document in a format and manner that retains the
"look and feel" of paper.

As I understand the discussions at Atlanta, most participants felt that PDF
did a better job than XML at this stage of performing this first task and
that continued efforts towards a CourtDocument schema within the CourtFiling
TC were going to be deprecated in favor of using PDF. The consensus as
explained to me was that the participants in a CourtDocument standard could
proceed as a subcommittee on their own, but without support from the
CourtFiling TC itself. As I was not present, please correct me if I have
mispoken.

But I digress.

At a second level, there is a need to support the "hooks" for applications
to make use of the data in the XML documents. These are fairly rudimentary
and poorly understood at this stage in the evolution of CourtDocument, IMO.

We are learning from the eContracts TC some of the latter techniques, as
like CourtDocument, eContracts require a familiar "look and feel" as well as
application "hooks." They are different than those for CourtDocument, but
related.

This leads me to the conclusion that what is needed is a LegalDocument TC,
where the similarities and differences between the various "flavors" of
documents can be normalized, using techniques of a "core" schema,
inheritance of the "core" elements and attributes, extensions to the various
domains: CourtDocument, eContracts, etc. as well as the types of hooks that
are needed for specific applications in the various domains. I would add to
this a universal citation standard, which the ABA has requested and
authorized, and which does not strictly speaking fall within CourtFiling.

I would therefore like to see CourtDocument itself remain where it is,
within the CourtFiling TC, and a new LegalDocument TC created, where the
development of these techniques across the board (our original "horizontal"
concept from the early days of LegalXML) can be developed. Then with a
liasion from CourtFiling, the learning of this new TC, as appropriate, can
be ported to CourtDocument, under the control of CourtFiling.

I would be interested in hearing from others about this idea.

=====================================================
All:

If a proposal is made to revise the Court Filing TC charter to separate
Court Document out and make it a separate TC, I suggest that rather than
Court Filing TC members justifying the current charter where Court Document
is part of it, the opposite needs to occur -- those proposing to separate
Court Document from Court Filing need to make the case for doing so.

I do agree with Diane's statement that "close identification" between the
groups has not been observed.  However, I view this as an issue to be
addressed within the TC, not a reason to separate Court Document from Court
Filing.  From my point of view as to what is needed for our electronic
filing project (which I believe will also be needed for others), we need
both a Court Filing standard and a Court Document standard, or possibly one
standard that covers both.  The Court Document standard needs to include all
the data tags that we need in order to process e-filed documents; in other
words, it needs to include tags for all of the data that our staff currently
keys into various CMS/DMS systems -- this is at a more detailed level than
those included in the ECF 1.1 standard, which might be enough to get a
document into the case file, but does not include tags for all of the
additional data that we enter in various systems for various document types.
Until that level of detail!
 ed data tags are included, we will not be able to reach the ultimate goal
of fully automating the processing of electronically filed documents, at
least not in a large court of general jurisdiction like ours where we have
multiple systems where data is entered today, and new ones being developed
all the time.  It will take time to identify all of the needed tags, but I
think we can get there.  The current Court Document standard is a good
starting point that can be built upon for specific document types.

My view of the purpose of the Court Document standard is that it is to tag
the data used by the clerk and/or court, the data that is of use to
practitioners for their own purposes, as well as for other purposes such as
electronic service, etc.  I do not feel that those members of the TC
interested in Court Document should need to participate in a separate TC to
ensure that the Court Document standard meets our needs; the additional time
to attend meetings of multiple TCs is something that would be very difficult
for many of us to do.  At this point, I strongly oppose separating Court
Document out of the Court Filing TC.  My primary concern is that there would
be even less identification with the Court Filing TC as a whole than there
has been in the past.  Unless someone makes a strong case for doing so, I
would be voting that I cannot live with a proposal to separate Court
Document from Court Filing.

Thanks,

Catherine Krause
E-Filing Project Manager
King County Department of Judicial Administration
(206)296-7860
catherine.krause@metrokc.gov




-----Original Message-----
From: Diane.Lewis@usdoj.gov [mailto:Diane.Lewis@usdoj.gov]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 8:53 AM
To: 'courtfiling-doc@lists.oasis-open.org'; 'Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV'
Subject: RE: [courtfiling-doc] Breaking Court Document out of Court Filing



thanks Roger for quick response,

i would suggest that the Court Filing stakeholders who have an interest in
XML court document standard consider joining a separate Court Document TC
....

i have not seen demonstrated at the Court Filing meetings the "close
identification" between the two at the meetings i have attended.....  the
last set of meeting notes to my mind indicate the opposite... that the court
filing envelope /transmission capability takes any BLOB... not exclusively a
document that authored/created based on XML technologies/standards.

i would welcome a list of reasons from you and/or other ECF stakeholders as
to why the document/filing components should remain in tandum....

diane



-----Original Message-----
From: Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV [mailto:Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 11:40 AM
To: courtfiling-doc@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [courtfiling-doc] Breaking Court Document out of Court Filing
Importance: Low



Diane,

I will, of course, represent the ECF TC to the Steering Committee by
conveying its requests, recommendations, etc., there. There are, by the way,
specific OASIS procedures relating to the formation of Technical Committees,
etc. Whatever decisions are reached would be implemented within those
procedures.

Now, writing as an individual member of the ECF TC, I think this is the
first time I've heard a proposal to move the Court Document committee toward
being its own TC. I would think that Court Document needs to become more
closely identified with Court Filing, where many of its stakeholders are
involved.

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: Diane.Lewis@usdoj.gov [mailto:Diane.Lewis@usdoj.gov]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 8:08 AM
To: courtfiling-doc@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [courtfiling-doc] Breaking Court Document out of Court Filing

Roger,
 i am addressing this message through the court document filing SC...instead
of directly to you.... so others can provide their thoughts.

I would like to request that you along with elected members to the LegalXML
member Section board... consider a realignment of Court Document ... instead
of being designated as a subcommittee under Court Filing.  I propose that

the community consider it a separate TC....   the charter for the
subcommittee can be rewritten to justify the need to place a definite
boundary between court filing and court document.

i look forward to learning your detailed views on this proposal as well as
learning the views of other court document SC members.

thanks for considering this idea.... diane