Court Filing Document Subcommittee

Hello,

This is a brief report on what I have been doing with the Court Filing Document Subcommittee, which I co-chair with Rex McElrath. Rex has already begun a project using markup in support enforcement documents in Georgia.

I have been reviewing the Roster of the Subcommittee, seeking to reconstitute it for the work we are undertaking, to support automation in data entry in clerk review of e-filed documents. I received responses from several who are interested in working as Members. Several others are now listed as “Observers” and will receive the e-mail messages, but not participate in activities of the subcommittee. A few asked to be dropped from the roster. I have a few more individuals I’ve yet to hear from directly – they are “Observers” until they request to be dropped or become Members.

Dr. Leff visited with me at King County (Seattle) last Monday and Tuesday. I familiarized him with our electronic court record systems including e-filing and e-service. We are adding a pilot project on e-working papers – that has been the one thing (other than problems with the enabling rule, which has been amended now) that law firms tell us prevents them from e-filing. They still have had to deliver hard copy working papers (judge’s copy) to the Courthouse. After the Pilot is over, we are hopeful the Court will adopt methods for receiving working papers electronically.

Dr. Leff seemed to feel there are good opportunities here to demonstrate the efficacy of using standard XML markup to produce automation in clerk review. (I don’t believe all clerk review can be automated, but a lot of routine data entry done now by hand can certainly be eliminated by ensuring XML tagged data elements are in the envelope or in the filed document.) We plan to build a work plan that might involve Dr. Leff or a student from WIU working with us to set up a demonstration. We expect to request funds for that project from the LegalXML Member Section Steering Committee. It is not clear whether King County can access other fund sources for this.

Having just met with Dr. Leff, I now have to lay out the project concepts with my department’s leadership and see whether they agree this is the time to take this on. I believe they will be glad to do this, since automation thanks to XML tags is largely what brought court clerks into LegalXML in the first place.

We will keep you informed as a proposed project takes shape and we will need to ask the Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee to direct its representative to the Steering Committee to request funds needed for this demonstration.

If there are questions, perhaps I can respond during today’s conference call?

Regards,

Roger

Roger Winters

Program and Project Manager

King County Department of Judicial Administration

KCC-JA-0609

516 Third Avenue, E-609

Seattle, WA 98104

(206) 296-7838

NEW > roger.winters@kingcounty.gov

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