Title: RE: [courtfiling-doc] Breaking Court Document out of Court Filing
John has given a good summary of the discussion in Atlanta as I recall
it.
In Atlanta, I started out intending to present a "prototype" XML
schema for court documents, but wound up asking whether those present
thought such an effort truly would be useful to the TC. No one opposed or
was in any way hostile toward such an effort. However, there was doubt
expressed whether the effort was particularly useful considering problems
with consistently displaying XML documents. There also is still
a lack of good XML editing tools that make it relatively easy for
users such as judges, lawyers, clerks, and their secretaries to create
XML court documents. The consensus among those present was that the better
approach at present is for court documents to be submitted as .pdf files
instead of XML for purposes of electronic filing, and that an XML schema for
court documents is interesting but of little practical value.
I believe one reason the Court Filing and Court Document efforts have
proceeded along separate though related tracks has to do with fundamentally
different views regarding the use of XML.
The fundamental issue goes beyond using XML for court filings and
court documents. XML can be used for either data-centric documents
(sales orders, flight schedules, scientific data, and stock quotes, and similar
documents that use XML as a data-transport for machine consumption) or
document-centric documents (articles, books, email, advertisements, and
similar documents intended for human consumption). Distinguishing XML
documents as either data-centric or document-centric is not always clear
cut, but the characterization affects a number of considerations. Two good (and
brief) summaries of this subject are at http://www.isgmlug.org/database.html and
http://www.rpbourret.com/xml/XMLAndDatabases.htm#datavdocs.
With the court document effort, we have taken a document-centric
approach to XML, while the court filing effort has been far
more data-centric for understandable reasons. We actually have
accommodated both approaches up to this point and it's possible to continue
doing so in the future. Whether efforts to come up with a standard XML schema
for court documents take place within the Court Filing TC or a separate TC is
not an important issue for me - I can live with either approach. The more
important question for me is whether the effort is really beneficial.
Finally, I agree that the time is not ripe to form a new TC for all types
of legal documents. I'd rather see standard XML schema evolve for
contracts, wills, deeds, UCC filing statements, etc. as well as for court
documents before anyone undertakes to standardize the
standards.
Rolly Chambers
----- Original Message -----
From:
John Greacen
To: 'Krause, Catherine' ;
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 10:12
AM
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
