Courts Quick to Discover Internet’s Capabilities

Federal courts have been quick to discover just how well Internet access complements the public’s need for information. From on-line rulings to forms on the web, courts are using the Internet to make access to records easier, filing more convenient, and some routine legal tasks more efficient. What is most impressive, however, may be the creativity individual courts are showing in their use of the Internet.

Federal court presence on the Internet is widespread. The Judiciary hosts its own website at www.uscourts.gov with general information on the structure of the federal Judiciary, statistics, rules, news releases, answers to frequently asked questions, and much more. Many of the circuits post their opinions on the Internet, either on their own websites or in cooperation with a law school. In the 5th Circuit, new opinions are released twice a day. An opinions subscription list allows members of the public to automatically receive a WordPerfect copy of each published opinion via e-mail.

A look at the links on the federal Judiciary’s homepage shows that 59 districts post such information as schedules, local rules, fee schedules, and job vacancies. Several courts offer electronic filing capabilities and many more, such as the Northern Dis-trict of Mississippi, put filing forms on the Internet to save attorneys the legwork and time it takes to come down to the courthouse. An assessment project involving the district courts for the Northern District of Texas (www.txnd.uscourts.gov.) and the District of South Dakota (www.sdd.uscourts.gov), and the bankruptcy courts for the Northern District of Texas (www.txnb.uscourts.gov) and the Southern District of California (www.casb.uscourts.gov) is testing a public access network on the Internet through the Judiciary’s gateways. These websites would provide the same information currently available on dial-up PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) systems, which allow users with personal computers to dial into a district or bankruptcy court computer to retrieve electronic case information and court dockets. The Southern District of California also will provide imaged documents via the Internet.

And the list goes on. For example, two courts have shown an innovative flair in developing products for the Internet.

CourtWeb On-Line Rulings Information System

The District Court for the Southern District of New York (www.nysd.uscourts.gov) recently initiated the CourtWeb On-Line Rulings Information System. Court-Web notifies attorneys or law firms within 15 minutes of the entry of any ruling or decision on any case the firm has registered for on the website. For example, a firm or practitioner would enter the case numbers for the cases they are following in the dis-trict court. When a ruling in that case or cases is posted to CourtWeb, an automatic e-mail message is sent directly to the attorney or firm’s con-tact person. The message includes all the information contained in the ruling entry. More than 30 of the dis-trict’s judges participate in the sys-tem with more than 164 law firms nationwide, including corporate law departments, federal, state and local governmental agencies registered to receive information. The system also can be searched by a judge’s name or case number. A brief summary of the ruling is included in each entry, in addition to information such as the caption, case number, date, and judge’s name. The system has been enhanced recently to allow attorneys to view the actual ruling or opinion document as well. The system software can be used by any court and more information on CourtWeb is posted at www.nysd.uscourts.gov. CourtWeb was begun at the direction of the district’s technology committee and has been shepherded through to completion by the District Court Executive’s Office. “One of the purposes of CourtWeb,” said District Court Executive Clifford Kirsch, “was to cut down on the phone calls coming to chambers staff from attorneys checking on cases, and it has succeeded at being a time saver. For us, CourtWeb is making the best use of technology. It’s designed for the le-gal community, but it’s not restricted to them. Anybody who wants to look at the system can do it.”

Defining an Electronic Filing Court Interface

Courts often develop local solutions to address particular needs when no national standard is available. For example, over the past few years the District Court for the District of New Mexico (www.nmcourt.fed.us) has developed the Advanced Court Engineering (ACE) system to allow the court to accept filings electronically via the Internet. In an effort to increase the volume of electronic filing, the court has recently undertaken a follow- on initiative to define a standard interface to the ACE system that will let third-party software suppliers develop law office software applications that could ease the electronic filing process. The intent is to make electronic filing another feature that could be integrated into existing law office software products by third-party vendors to complement law office systems that provide such functions as appointment calendars, case management, noticing, and billing. Rather than using the current interactive Web browser interface to ACE, attorneys will have the option to file electronically via more familiar law office software. Additionally, bulk filers, such as bankruptcy creditors potentially could develop or purchase software to enable “automatic” filing from their database applications directly to the court’s ACE database.

The new initiative, called Extensible Markup Language Court Interface (XCI), is an attempt to characterize the electronic filing process of ACE in terms of a precise specification, using a recently adopted Internet standard called Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is an enhanced form of the standard HTML web page description language. XML contains facilities for defining data structure and content, which can be used to define electronic filing transactions that can be processed automatically by the ACE software. The XCI specification is currently under development and will include capabilities to handle electronic filing (including attachments), docket entry generation, document security, message authentication, and filing confirmation. By explicitly defining the data entry interface to ACE, New Mexico hopes to encourage third-party vendors to enhance their existing law office software offerings (or develop new ones) to provide the electronic filing capability to a broader cross-section of the practicing bar.