Title: RE: [courtfiling-doc] Breaking Court Document out of Court Filing
My point
about putting the proposal in the form of a draft charter is to frame the issues
and determine who is sponsoring and leading such a proposed TC. This
particular procedure is spelled out in OASIS at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php#tc_formation. This approach has
the added benefit of having the discussion in the public domain as
well. If there is another procedure under OASIS, someone should put
it on the table.
Our Steering committee
is not omniscient and should be steering the work of the TC's not dictating
what folks should do or not do. If someone wants to run with this,
we should encourage volunteerism and not stifle such an
initiative.
On a substantive note, the discussion
about locking in the presentation format that took place in eContracts went in
the direction that distinguishes between data that people want in a smart
structured exchange format and data that needs to be in a presentable
format. This allows the continuation of the blob WITH structured data but
is can be based on the parties' agreement on what constitutes the binding
bilateral contract. Court Documents are unilateral and may need
some basis other than consent.
I am also
pleased to say that I filed the final tax return for LegalXML, Inc., reporting
that it was dissolved in 2002. We are committed to the OASIS
course.
Let's
discuss the process for considering a new TC under the OASIS Rules of Procedure
(RoP). The steering committee should discuss it, but let's use a broader forum
and process as provided in the RoP. If no one assembles a charter or
we decide to go in another direction, the issues surfaced by CFTC
and eContracts need horizontal resolution.
All the
best
Jim
Keane
Former
Vice-Chair, Legal XML, Inc.
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
Co-Author and Annual Update Editor of Treatise: Litigation
Support Systems, An Attorney Guide 2nd Ed. (WestGroup,
1992, updated through 2002)
-----Original Message-----
From: John Greacen
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 10:13
AM
To: 'Krause, Catherine';
Subject: RE: [courtfiling-doc]
Breaking Court Document out of Court Filing
The discussion in
Atlanta focused on several
matters
–
One, should Court
Document be incorporated into Court Filing Blue? Those who expressed views
thought not. The two specifications should remain separate, although they
would both evolve in the same general directions for the Blue generation of TC
specifications.
–
Two, what changes need
to be made to Court Document as the subcommittee develops a schema-based
specification? Among the issues discussed was a revisiting of a basic
issue that the TC had grappled with in the past – how can we guarantee to
lawyers and to courts that XML documents will retain their content and
formatting when displayed on different browsers and applications within law
offices and courts? Our previous discussions all concluded that use of the
same style sheet would obtain this result. All we needed to do was have
the lawyer include the style sheet with the XML instance, and “sign” both, and
we could guarantee the integrity of the content within the document and the
format in which it appeared. The discussion in Atlanta reached the opposite
factual conclusion – at the current level of development of XML, we cannot be
assured of the integrity of the content or the format when documents are
displayed using different browsers and different applications. TC members
in Atlanta stated, without
contradiction, that if a document created with Court Document 1.1 is displayed
with a different browser than the one used to create it, it may show different
content and different formatting. The likelihood of those changes is not
predictable. It is also impossible to require all participants to use the
same browser and application to avoid this result. It was also pointed out
that the same is true to a far lesser extent for pdf – specifically -- that
special characters can display differently in a pdf than in the document from
which it was created, such as a special symbol used as a bullet displaying as a
character instead. Pdf, however, has proved to be sufficiently
representative to have earned the confidence of lawyers and courts. This
discussion suggested to some of those present that Court Document 1.1, and any
future Court Document specifications, will – at the current state of XML
technology – be useful primarily for form-based documents (in which only the
data is of great consequence) and not for “free text” documents. We all
agreed that we need to do more testing of Court Document in different
configurations to determine how reliable it will be in
practice.
–
There was no intimation
that the full Technical Committee was uninterested in or unwilling to continue
to work on these issues with the Court Document subcommittee in the
future. In fact, this was one of the very best and most thorough
explorations of the issues associated with Court Document that I have observed
in the long history of the TC. Dallas
Powell, Shane Durham and Dr.
Leff made extremely valuable contributions to the discussion of the issues that
Rolly raised on behalf of the subcommittee.
The
discussion of a separate TC for court document took place on the conference call
following the Atlanta meeting, not at the
Atlanta meeting. It was
initiated by Diane Lewis, arising from her analysis of the charters of all of
the Legal XML Member Section Technical Committees for the Member Section
Steering Committee.
I disagree
with Jim Keane’s suggestion that persons interested in a separate Legal
Documents Technical Committee should make a proposal to OASIS to create
one. Given the importance of this issue to the Legal XML Member Section, I
believe that the matter should be studied by our new Steering Committee and that
all members of the Member Section should abide that the Steering Committee’s
decision of the issue. The discussion has raised a number of valid points
pro and con and we should rely on the governance mechanism we have created to
resolve them.
John M.
Greacen
Greacen Associates,
LLC
HCR 78, Box
23
Regina, New Mexico
87046
505-289-2164
505-780-1450
(cell)
-----Original
Message-----
From: Krause,
Catherine [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 9:46
AM
To:
Subject: RE: [courtfiling-doc] Breaking
Court Document out of Court Filing
John:
Your idea
sounds reasonable.
I also was
not in Atlanta, and now re-reading the minutes (which I had skimmed previously),
I understand more about why this topic came up -- I apologize for not doing so
earlier. The minutes seem to indicate that there was a discussion about
whether the Court Document standard should be merged into the Court Filing
standard, rather than have two separate standards, and that the topic was to be
discussed further at the next face-to-face in July. The minutes do not
mention the discussion about Court Document separating from Court Filing and
going "on their own" as you describe below.
It might be
helpful for those of us who were not in Atlanta if someone who was in Atlanta
could clarify, or at least confirm that John's summary below was also part of
the conversation.
Thanks,
Catherine
Krause
E-Filing
Project Manager
King County Department of Judicial
Administration
(206)296-7860
-----Original Message-----
From: jmessing [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday,
May 14, 2003 8:13 AM
To:
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 detailed 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
-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:]
Sent: Monday, May
05, 2003 8:53 AM
To: '';
''
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: [mailto:]
Sent: Monday, May
05, 2003 11:40 AM
To:
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
-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:]
Sent: Monday, May
05, 2003 8:08 AM
To:
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
