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

Hello, ECFTC!

I want to share 1. A link to an article of interest, 2. a comment on
"display" of XML documents ("instances"), and 3. comments on proposal(s) for
a new technical committee (for "Court Document" or for "Legal Document").

1.	The May 15 issue of "Law.Com" included an article that relates to
our work: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1052440723645
<http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1052440723645> .

2.	I acknowledge that a strong expression of the importance of a stable
appearance for a legal document, particularly a court filing, has been made
in several ways, including the Process Standards. There have, however, been
discussions about alternate ways to reference information in documents (the
real reason for pagination) in order to enable the fullest use of electronic
document technology. One such alternative is the "paragraph numbering" idea
where, based on some to-be-determined convention, the paragraphs (or
paragraph units) in a document would be sequentially numbered so they could
be referenced accurately even though different people might find them on
different pages due to variances in their browsers, word processors, etc.
One notion supporting this approach is that computers are very good at
numbering things: it would seem that identifying numbers could easily be
fixed to paragraphs within a given document. By definition, a change in the
document that might affect its paragraph numbers would be a new version of
the document. I hope such alternatives stay in view - holding on to "page"
and "format" seems to me to be a form of holding on to paper! When
considering paragraph numbering, please don't just imagine differences
caused by using stylesheets that show up differently in one browser or
another: Suppose a visually impaired person were to display a document in a
very large font in order to read it -- the difference in apparent pagination
would be extreme. (If this paragraph numbering practice were adopted, I
predict a movement in style toward writing shorter paragraphs in legal
documents would ensue.)

3.	OASIS's allowing three members to initiate a technical committee
opens the door to good and not-so-good results. To the good, it doesn't
require that a large number be convinced in order to present a charter and
propose work to be done. On the other hand, it makes it appear easier to
form a new group than to confront difficulties, however severe or slight, in
an existing technical committee where the work might well be most
appropriately placed. I am aligned with those who believe that Court
Document and Court Filing are so strongly related that it would be a mistake
to develop them in separated efforts. I believe our TC as a whole needs to
take ownership of Court Document and develop it alongside (or within)

Court
Filing - Blue. The TC has not had discussion along those lines yet because
its current focus is in building the foundation for "Blue" through
developing interoperability and process issues and models.

While I might be persuaded, after extensive discussion and exploration of
alternatives, that a parallel effort focused on "Legal Document"
specifications might make sense, my starting position is that the
fundamental standards that should be part of all of Legal XML's
specifications need to be agreed upon first. The technical architecture for
transmittal, security, validation, etc., should, I'd think, be essentially
the same for all legal documents as they are for court filings in
particular. There should, I think, be a common vocabulary that reflects a
belief that "things legal" refer to the same people, things, attributes, and
relationships, whether they are in the context of a court, a contract
negotiation, a labor agreement, a statute, a marriage license, or other. I
have never been convinced that "translation tools" will "take care of" the
differences that come from having separate and uncoordinated work products
generated by a "Balkanized" approach to standards development.

Best wishes,

Roger

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