[legalxml-ms] OASIS TC Call For Participation: LegalXML Transcripts TC

["Karl F. Best" <karl.best@oasis-open.org>]

A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS LegalXML
Contracts Technical Committee has been proposed by the following
members of OASIS: Eddie O達rien, Ringtail Solutions; and the following
Individual members: Rolly L. Chambers, Dan Greenwood, and James I.
Keane.

The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC
Process (see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is
appended to this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of
purpose, list of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute
the TC's charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified
(revised) by the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well
as submissions of technology for consideration by the TC and the
beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's
first meeting.

To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an
OASIS member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify
the TC chair, Eddie O達rien (eddie@ringtailsolutions.com) of your
intent to participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and
3) attend the first meeting on 19 September. You should also subscribe
to the TC's mail list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by
individual, and not by organization. You must be eligible for
participation at the time you time you notify the chair.

The private mail list legalxml-transcripts@lists.oasis-open.org is for
committee discussions. TC members as well as any other interested
OASIS members should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list
web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a
message to legalxml-transcripts-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the
word "subscribe" as the body of the message. (Note that subscribing to
the mail list does not make you a member of the TC; to become a member
you must contact the TC chair and attend the first meeting as
described in the preceeding paragraph.)

A public comment list
legalxml-transcripts-comment@lists.oasis-open.org will be available
for the public to make comments on the work of this TC; the public may
subscribe to this list by going to the mail list web page at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a message to
legalxml-transcripts-comment-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the
word "subscribe" as the body of the message.

The archives of both of these mail lists are visible to the public at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/

</karl>
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
+1 978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org  http://www.oasis-open.org


Charter for Legal Transcripts Technical Committee in the LegalXML
Member Section of OASIS

Introduction

Legal transcripts are documents that are created in courthouses,
hearing rooms and private depositions. Their primary purpose is to be
a verbatim record of the dialogue that took place. They are used to
review testimony and decisions, and as an historical archive of the
events that occurred. A transcript is usually recorded by a single
reporter, but may be also be the work of two or more reporters. There
are two separate transcript standards that will be created:

* Static or completed transcript standard
* Realtime or streamed transcript standard

Current best practice includes the addition of non-dialogue
information by the reporter, to make the transcript easier to read.
The non-dialogue information includes indexes of witnesses and
exhibits, as well as headings and asides within the transcript itself
to reflect major sections, examinations by different attorneys, and
non-spoken courtroom or deposition activity. Typically, each
transcript reflects the content of a single session on a single day,
although some transcripts may extend across days.


(i) Name of Technical Committee

OASIS LegalXML Legal Transcripts Technical Committee within the
LegalXML Member Section.

The Technical Committee plans to constitute the following
subcommittees, and such additional subcommittees as shall appear
necessary and appropriate to carrying out the Technical Committee痴
purpose:

* Static or completed transcript standard Subcommittee
* Realtime or streamed transcript standard Subcommittee


(ii) Purpose of Technical Committee

The purpose of is to develop:

1. an XML compliant syntax for representing legal transcript documents
either as stand-alone structured content, or as part of other legal
records.
2. an XML compliant syntax for representing realtime streamed legal
transcript.

Such transcripts will be able to provide access to the verbatim
record, and any meta-information that is important within the context
of that transcript. The core scope of this activity will be in
specifying the necessary data model of legal transcripts and realtime
streamed transcripts and the syntax of their representation in XML.
The core activities are:

1. Defining a data model that describes current transcript formats for
both static and realtime.
2. Using the transcript data model to design the Proposed
Recommendation of the LegalXML-Transcript standard.
3. Documenting the working group's position on citation to transcripts
with a LegalXML note.
4. Define the charter for subsequent work once (1-3) have been
achieved.
Requirements

The Working Group must meet the following requirements:

1. Coordinate with other LegalXML recommendations, in particular in
the area of Horizontal tags, Citation and Signatures. (See
Coordination)
2. After being advanced to Proposed Recommendation, implement the
mandatory portions of the specification in at least two independent
implementations.

The following requirements must be met by the LegalXML-Transcript
standard the Working Group develops:

1. Specify a minimum set of tags that all LegalXML 亡tatic and
realtime Transcript documents must contain.
2. Permit the accurate and unambiguous capture of the spoken dialogue
being transcribed.
3. Ensure that the chronological order of the content within the
transcript is explicitly preserved.
4. Contain a useful and extensible base set of tags for representation
of non-dialogue transcript information.
5. Handle all legal transcripts, regardless of transcription method.
6. Ensure that transcripts both with and without non-dialogue
information can be easily represented.
7. Support unambiguous paper or electronic citation to both locations
and ranges within transcripts.
8. Where electronic citation is not possible, ensure that excerpts of
transcripts can be easily represented within other documents.
9. Support time stamping of the content.
10. Support simultaneous page/line and structure-based organization of
content.
11. Support the use of the signature standard adopted by LegalXML to
represent certification of the transcript.
12. Use Horizontal working group tags where appropriate.
13. Permit external entities such as exhibits to be referred to within
the Transcript.
14. Make use of W3C standards where appropriate.
15. Support non-English languages.
16. Define a sufficient representation of the certified transcript,
through a stylesheet or some other appropriate mechanism.

Constraints

The working group will not directly address the following issues:

1. Untranslated transcripts (stenographic notes)
2. Versioning of transcripts, including judicial interference in the
transcript content.
3. A mandate for electronic or digital signing of the transcript.
4. Requirements for on-screen or printed transcript presentation,
except insofar as existing page/line and header/footer representation
will be permitted.
5. Workflow before, during or after a transcribed session


(iii) List of deliverables

The Legal Transcripts Technical Committee plans to complete the
following tasks during its first year of operation:

This working group will deliver the following:

* LegalXML Working Draft identifying the requirements and data-model
of legal transcripts being considered by the working group.
* LegalXML Proposed Standard for the representation of transcript in
XML.
* LegalXML Unofficial Note documenting a set of test cases for
interoperability testing.
* Once accepted by the appropriate LegalXML/OASIS committee, the
Recommended Standard for LegalXML Transcript.

Duration and Milestones

The following key milestones were achieved by the former LegalXML work
group. This work will be the basis of the list milestones for both
Static and Realtime work. The aid clarity the Static and Realtime
milestones are listed separately:

* Jan 00 First Requirements Draft
* Feb 00 Last Call for Data Model; becomes a Note
* Feb 00 First Static Syntax Working Draft
* May 00 Second Static Syntax Working Draft

Static Transcript milestones:

* Static Sample Transcripts available on WG Web site
* Working Draft of Static Transcript standard
* Interoperability Test Cases and Results document Finalized
* Last Call for Static Syntax Working Draft
* Interoperability Test Cases and Results for Static Standard
* Last Call for Proposed Static Standard; submitted to Legal XML
Standards Committee

Realtime Transcript milestones:

* Realtime Data Model Finalized; becomes a Note
* First Realtime Syntax Working Draft
* First Realtime Syntax Working Draft
* Meeting to discuss Realtime Syntax Working Draft (TBD)
* Last Call for Proposed Realtime Standard; submitted to Legal XML
Standards Committee
* Realtime Data Model (Requirements) First Draft
* Post the Legal Transcripts 1.0 on the Technical Committee site for
general information and comment.


(iv) Language in which the Technical Committee will conduct business

All business will be conducted in English.


(v) Date and time of the first meeting

The first formal meeting of the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee
is proposed to be via a telephone conference on Thursday, September
19, 2002 at 2pm Eastern Time.


(vi) Meeting schedule for the year following formation of the
Technical Committee

It is proposed that the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee will
hold face to face meetings annually (time and place to be determined)
and also to hold quarterly telephone or web meetings to be arranged.
The dates and places for those meetings are:

  September, 2002   September 19, 2pm
  December 2002     To be determined
  April, 2003       To be determined
  July, 2003        To be determined


(vii) Names, electronic addresses and membership affiliations of
persons eligible for OASIS Technical Committee Participation committed
to the stated meeting schedule

The following OASIS members support the creation of the Legal
Transcripts Technical Committee:

Rolly L. Chambers, rlchambers@justice.com, individual member
Eddie O達rien, eddie@ringtailsolutions.com, Ringtail Solutions
Dan Greenwood, dang@mit.edu, individual member
James I. Keane, jik@jkeane.com, individual member


(viii) Name of the Technical Committee Co-chairs

Chair: Eddie O達rien
Vice Chair: Dan Greenwood


(ix) Names of phone meeting sponsors

Eddie O達rien


(x) Names of face-to-face meeting sponsors

Dan Greenwood


(xi) Policies and procedures of the Legal Transcripts Technical
Committee

The Legal Transcripts Technical Committee will follow the operating
rules of OASIS and any operating rules adopted by the LegalXML Member
Section Steering Committee with the approval of OASIS management and
the OASIS Board of Directors.  In addition, the Technical Committee
will abide by the following practices:

1. All decisions will be made by consensus.
2. All decisions made subject to ratification or rejection by the full
membership of the Technical Committee on the list serve.
3. All email discussions concerning the technical work of the
Technical Committee and its subcommittees will take place on OASIS
supported list serves.
4.  One member of the Technical Committee and of each subcommittee
will serve as ombudsman to monitor the public list for that entity and
provide input from the public list to the committee and subcommittee
discussions.
5. In no event shall this Technical Committee finalize or approve any
technical specification if the use, distribution, or implementation of
such specification would necessarily require the unauthorized
infringement of any third party rights, and such third party has not
agreed to provide necessary license rights on perpetual, royalty-free,
non-discriminatory terms.