legalxml-courtfiling — archive

[Roger Winters]

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 roger.winters@metrokc.gov