LegalXML Transcripts TC

Date:      Mon, 29 Jul 2002 08:22:58 -0400
From:      Karl F. Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org>
To:        members@lists.oasis-open.org, tc-announce@lists.oasis-open.org,
Subject:   OASIS TC Call For Participation: LegalXML Transcripts TC

A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS LegalXML Contracts Technical Committee has been proposed by the following members of OASIS: Eddie O'Brien, Ringtail Solutions; and the following Individual members: Rolly L. Chambers, Dan Greenwood, and James I. Keane.

The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process (see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is appended to this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of purpose, list of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute the TC's charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified (revised) by the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well as submissions of technology for consideration by the TC and the beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting.

To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify the TC chair, Eddie O'Brien (eddie@ringtailsolutions.com) of your intent to participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend the first meeting on 19 September. You should also subscribe to the TC's mail list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual, and not by organization. You must be eligible for participation at the time you time you notify the chair.

The private mail list legalxml-transcripts@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a message to legalxml-transcripts-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the body of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not make you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC chair and attend the first meeting as described in the preceeding paragraph.)

A public comment list legalxml-transcripts-comment@lists.oasis-open.org will be available for the public to make comments on the work of this TC; the public may subscribe to this list by going to the mail list web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a message to legalxml-transcripts-comment-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the body of the message.

The archives of both of these mail lists are visible to the public at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/

</karl>
Karl F. Best
OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
+1 978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org http://www.oasis-open.org

Charter for Legal Transcripts Technical Committee in the LegalXML Member Section of OASIS

Introduction

Legal transcripts are documents that are created in courthouses, hearing rooms and private depositions. Their primary purpose is to be a verbatim record of the dialogue that took place. They are used to review testimony and decisions, and as an historical archive of the events that occurred. A transcript is usually recorded by a single reporter, but may be also be the work of two or more reporters. There are two separate transcript standards that will be created:

* Static or completed transcript standard
* Realtime or streamed transcript standard

Current best practice includes the addition of non-dialogue information by the reporter, to make the transcript easier to read. The non-dialogue information includes indexes of witnesses and exhibits, as well as headings and asides within the transcript itself to reflect major sections, examinations by different attorneys, and non-spoken courtroom or deposition activity. Typically, each transcript reflects the content of a single session on a single day, although some transcripts may extend across days.

Name of Technical Committee

OASIS LegalXML Legal Transcripts Technical Committee within the LegalXML Member Section.

The Technical Committee plans to constitute the following subcommittees, and such additional subcommittees as shall appear necessary and appropriate to carrying out the Technical Committee's purpose:

* Static or completed transcript standard Subcommittee
* Realtime or streamed transcript standard Subcommittee

Purpose of Technical Committee

The purpose of is to develop:

1. an XML compliant syntax for representing legal transcript documents either as stand-alone structured content, or as part of other legal records.

2. an XML compliant syntax for representing realtime streamed legal transcript.

Such transcripts will be able to provide access to the verbatim record, and any meta-information that is important within the context of that transcript. The core scope of this activity will be in specifying the necessary data model of legal transcripts and realtime streamed transcripts and the syntax of their representation in XML. The core activities are:

1. Defining a data model that describes current transcript formats for both static and realtime.

2. Using the transcript data model to design the Proposed Recommendation of the LegalXML-Transcript standard.

3. Documenting the working group's position on citation to transcripts with a LegalXML note.

4. Define the charter for subsequent work once (1-3) have been achieved.

Requirements

The Working Group must meet the following requirements:

1. Coordinate with other LegalXML recommendations, in particular in the area of Horizontal tags, Citation and Signatures. (See Coordination)

2. After being advanced to Proposed Recommendation, implement the mandatory portions of the specification in at least two independent implementations.

The following requirements must be met by the LegalXML-Transcript standard the Working Group develops:

1. Specify a minimum set of tags that all LegalXML Static and realtime Transcript documents must contain.

2. Permit the accurate and unambiguous capture of the spoken dialogue being transcribed.

3. Ensure that the chronological order of the content within the transcript is explicitly preserved.

4. Contain a useful and extensible base set of tags for representation of non-dialogue transcript information.

5. Handle all legal transcripts, regardless of transcription method.

6. Ensure that transcripts both with and without non-dialogue information can be easily represented.

7. Support unambiguous paper or electronic citation to both locations and ranges within transcripts.

8. Where electronic citation is not possible, ensure that excerpts of transcripts can be easily represented within other documents.

9. Support time stamping of the content.

10. Support simultaneous page/line and structure-based organization of content.

11. Support the use of the signature standard adopted by LegalXML to represent certification of the transcript.

12. Use Horizontal working group tags where appropriate.

13. Permit external entities such as exhibits to be referred to within the Transcript.

14. Make use of W3C standards where appropriate.

15. Support non-English languages.

16. Define a sufficient representation of the certified transcript, through a stylesheet or some other appropriate mechanism.

Constraints

The working group will not directly address the following issues:

1. Untranslated transcripts (stenographic notes)

2. Versioning of transcripts, including judicial interference in the transcript content.

3. A mandate for electronic or digital signing of the transcript.

4. Requirements for on-screen or printed transcript presentation, except insofar as existing page/line and header/footer representation will be permitted.

5. Workflow before, during or after a transcribed session

List of deliverables

The Legal Transcripts Technical Committee plans to complete the following tasks during its first year of operation:

This working group will deliver the following:

LegalXML Working Draft identifying the requirements and data-model of legal transcripts being considered by the working group.
LegalXML Proposed Standard for the representation of transcript in XML.
LegalXML Unofficial Note documenting a set of test cases for interoperability testing.
Once accepted by the appropriate LegalXML/OASIS committee, the Recommended Standard for LegalXML Transcript.

Duration and Milestones

The following key milestones were achieved by the former LegalXML work group. This work will be the basis of the list milestones for both Static and Realtime work. The aid clarity the Static and Realtime milestones are listed separately:

Jan 00 First Requirements Draft
Feb 00 Last Call for Data Model; becomes a Note
Feb 00 First Static Syntax Working Draft
May 00 Second Static Syntax Working Draft

Static Transcript milestones:

Static Sample Transcripts available on WG Web site
Working Draft of Static Transcript standard
Interoperability Test Cases and Results document Finalized
Last Call for Static Syntax Working Draft
Interoperability Test Cases and Results for Static Standard
Last Call for Proposed Static Standard; submitted to Legal XML Standards Committee

Realtime Transcript milestones:

Realtime Data Model Finalized; becomes a Note
First Realtime Syntax Working Draft
First Realtime Syntax Working Draft
Meeting to discuss Realtime Syntax Working Draft (TBD)
Last Call for Proposed Realtime Standard; submitted to Legal XML Standards Committee
Realtime Data Model (Requirements) First Draft
Post the Legal Transcripts 1.0 on the Technical Committee site for general information and comment.

Language in which the Technical Committee will conduct business

All business will be conducted in English.

Date and time of the first meeting

The first formal meeting of the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee is proposed to be via a telephone conference on Thursday, September 19, 2002 at 2pm Eastern Time.

Meeting schedule for the year following formation of the Technical Committee

It is proposed that the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee will hold face to face meetings annually (time and place to be determined) and also to hold quarterly telephone or web meetings to be arranged. The dates and places for those meetings are:

  September, 2002   September 19, 2pm
  December 2002     To be determined
  April, 2003       To be determined
  July, 2003        To be determined

Support

Names, electronic addresses and membership affiliations of persons eligible for OASIS Technical Committee Participation committed to the stated meeting schedule

The following OASIS members support the creation of the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee:

Rolly L. Chambers, rlchambers@justice.com, individual member
Eddie O'Brien, eddie@ringtailsolutions.com, Ringtail Solutions
Dan Greenwood, dang@mit.edu, individual member
James I. Keane, jik@jkeane.com, individual member

Name of the Technical Committee Co-chairs

Chair: Eddie O'Brien
Vice Chair: Dan Greenwood

Names of phone meeting sponsors

Eddie O'Brien

Names of face-to-face meeting sponsors

Dan Greenwood

Policies and procedures of the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee

The Legal Transcripts Technical Committee will follow the operating rules of OASIS and any operating rules adopted by the LegalXML Member Section Steering Committee with the approval of OASIS management and the OASIS Board of Directors. In addition, the Technical Committee will abide by the following practices:

1. All decisions will be made by consensus.

2. All decisions made subject to ratification or rejection by the full membership of the Technical Committee on the list serve.

3. All email discussions concerning the technical work of the Technical Committee and its subcommittees will take place on OASIS supported list serves.

4. One member of the Technical Committee and of each subcommittee will serve as ombudsman to monitor the public list for that entity and provide input from the public list to the committee and subcommittee discussions.

5. In no event shall this Technical Committee finalize or approve any technical specification if the use, distribution, or implementation of such specification would necessarily require the unauthorized infringement of any third party rights, and such third party has not agreed to provide necessary license rights on perpetual, royalty-free, non-discriminatory terms.

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See "Legal XML Working Group."

SEARCH Advanced Search ABOUT Site Map CP RSS Channel Contact Us Sponsoring CP About Our Sponsors NEWS Cover Stories Articles & Papers Press Releases CORE STANDARDS XML SGML Schemas XSL/XSLT/XPath XLink XML Query CSS SVG TECHNOLOGY REPORTS XML Applications General Apps Government Apps Academic Apps EVENTS LIBRARY Introductions FAQs Bibliography Technology and Society Semantics Tech Topics Software Related Standards Historic	LegalXML Transcripts TC Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 08:22:58 -0400 From: Karl F. Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org> To: members@lists.oasis-open.org, tc-announce@lists.oasis-open.org, Subject: OASIS TC Call For Participation: LegalXML Transcripts TC A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS LegalXML Contracts Technical Committee has been proposed by the following members of OASIS: Eddie O'Brien, Ringtail Solutions; and the following Individual members: Rolly L. Chambers, Dan Greenwood, and James I. Keane. The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process (see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is appended to this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of purpose, list of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute the TC's charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified (revised) by the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well as submissions of technology for consideration by the TC and the beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting. To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify the TC chair, Eddie O'Brien (eddie@ringtailsolutions.com) of your intent to participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend the first meeting on 19 September. You should also subscribe to the TC's mail list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual, and not by organization. You must be eligible for participation at the time you time you notify the chair. The private mail list legalxml-transcripts@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a message to legalxml-transcripts-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the body of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not make you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC chair and attend the first meeting as described in the preceeding paragraph.) A public comment list legalxml-transcripts-comment@lists.oasis-open.org will be available for the public to make comments on the work of this TC; the public may subscribe to this list by going to the mail list web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a message to legalxml-transcripts-comment-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the body of the message. The archives of both of these mail lists are visible to the public at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ </karl> Karl F. Best OASIS - Director, Technical Operations +1 978.667.5115 x206 karl.best@oasis-open.org http://www.oasis-open.org Charter for Legal Transcripts Technical Committee in the LegalXML Member Section of OASIS Introduction Legal transcripts are documents that are created in courthouses, hearing rooms and private depositions. Their primary purpose is to be a verbatim record of the dialogue that took place. They are used to review testimony and decisions, and as an historical archive of the events that occurred. A transcript is usually recorded by a single reporter, but may be also be the work of two or more reporters. There are two separate transcript standards that will be created: * Static or completed transcript standard * Realtime or streamed transcript standard Current best practice includes the addition of non-dialogue information by the reporter, to make the transcript easier to read. The non-dialogue information includes indexes of witnesses and exhibits, as well as headings and asides within the transcript itself to reflect major sections, examinations by different attorneys, and non-spoken courtroom or deposition activity. Typically, each transcript reflects the content of a single session on a single day, although some transcripts may extend across days. Name of Technical Committee OASIS LegalXML Legal Transcripts Technical Committee within the LegalXML Member Section. The Technical Committee plans to constitute the following subcommittees, and such additional subcommittees as shall appear necessary and appropriate to carrying out the Technical Committee's purpose: * Static or completed transcript standard Subcommittee * Realtime or streamed transcript standard Subcommittee Purpose of Technical Committee The purpose of is to develop: 1. an XML compliant syntax for representing legal transcript documents either as stand-alone structured content, or as part of other legal records. 2. an XML compliant syntax for representing realtime streamed legal transcript. Such transcripts will be able to provide access to the verbatim record, and any meta-information that is important within the context of that transcript. The core scope of this activity will be in specifying the necessary data model of legal transcripts and realtime streamed transcripts and the syntax of their representation in XML. The core activities are: 1. Defining a data model that describes current transcript formats for both static and realtime. 2. Using the transcript data model to design the Proposed Recommendation of the LegalXML-Transcript standard. 3. Documenting the working group's position on citation to transcripts with a LegalXML note. 4. Define the charter for subsequent work once (1-3) have been achieved. Requirements The Working Group must meet the following requirements: 1. Coordinate with other LegalXML recommendations, in particular in the area of Horizontal tags, Citation and Signatures. (See Coordination) 2. After being advanced to Proposed Recommendation, implement the mandatory portions of the specification in at least two independent implementations. The following requirements must be met by the LegalXML-Transcript standard the Working Group develops: 1. Specify a minimum set of tags that all LegalXML Static and realtime Transcript documents must contain. 2. Permit the accurate and unambiguous capture of the spoken dialogue being transcribed. 3. Ensure that the chronological order of the content within the transcript is explicitly preserved. 4. Contain a useful and extensible base set of tags for representation of non-dialogue transcript information. 5. Handle all legal transcripts, regardless of transcription method. 6. Ensure that transcripts both with and without non-dialogue information can be easily represented. 7. Support unambiguous paper or electronic citation to both locations and ranges within transcripts. 8. Where electronic citation is not possible, ensure that excerpts of transcripts can be easily represented within other documents. 9. Support time stamping of the content. 10. Support simultaneous page/line and structure-based organization of content. 11. Support the use of the signature standard adopted by LegalXML to represent certification of the transcript. 12. Use Horizontal working group tags where appropriate. 13. Permit external entities such as exhibits to be referred to within the Transcript. 14. Make use of W3C standards where appropriate. 15. Support non-English languages. 16. Define a sufficient representation of the certified transcript, through a stylesheet or some other appropriate mechanism. Constraints The working group will not directly address the following issues: 1. Untranslated transcripts (stenographic notes) 2. Versioning of transcripts, including judicial interference in the transcript content. 3. A mandate for electronic or digital signing of the transcript. 4. Requirements for on-screen or printed transcript presentation, except insofar as existing page/line and header/footer representation will be permitted. 5. Workflow before, during or after a transcribed session List of deliverables The Legal Transcripts Technical Committee plans to complete the following tasks during its first year of operation: This working group will deliver the following: LegalXML Working Draft identifying the requirements and data-model of legal transcripts being considered by the working group. LegalXML Proposed Standard for the representation of transcript in XML. LegalXML Unofficial Note documenting a set of test cases for interoperability testing. Once accepted by the appropriate LegalXML/OASIS committee, the Recommended Standard for LegalXML Transcript. Duration and Milestones The following key milestones were achieved by the former LegalXML work group. This work will be the basis of the list milestones for both Static and Realtime work. The aid clarity the Static and Realtime milestones are listed separately: Jan 00 First Requirements Draft Feb 00 Last Call for Data Model; becomes a Note Feb 00 First Static Syntax Working Draft May 00 Second Static Syntax Working Draft Static Transcript milestones: Static Sample Transcripts available on WG Web site Working Draft of Static Transcript standard Interoperability Test Cases and Results document Finalized Last Call for Static Syntax Working Draft Interoperability Test Cases and Results for Static Standard Last Call for Proposed Static Standard; submitted to Legal XML Standards Committee Realtime Transcript milestones: Realtime Data Model Finalized; becomes a Note First Realtime Syntax Working Draft First Realtime Syntax Working Draft Meeting to discuss Realtime Syntax Working Draft (TBD) Last Call for Proposed Realtime Standard; submitted to Legal XML Standards Committee Realtime Data Model (Requirements) First Draft Post the Legal Transcripts 1.0 on the Technical Committee site for general information and comment. Language in which the Technical Committee will conduct business All business will be conducted in English. Date and time of the first meeting The first formal meeting of the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee is proposed to be via a telephone conference on Thursday, September 19, 2002 at 2pm Eastern Time. Meeting schedule for the year following formation of the Technical Committee It is proposed that the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee will hold face to face meetings annually (time and place to be determined) and also to hold quarterly telephone or web meetings to be arranged. The dates and places for those meetings are: September, 2002 September 19, 2pm December 2002 To be determined April, 2003 To be determined July, 2003 To be determined Support Names, electronic addresses and membership affiliations of persons eligible for OASIS Technical Committee Participation committed to the stated meeting schedule The following OASIS members support the creation of the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee: Rolly L. Chambers, rlchambers@justice.com, individual member Eddie O'Brien, eddie@ringtailsolutions.com, Ringtail Solutions Dan Greenwood, dang@mit.edu, individual member James I. Keane, jik@jkeane.com, individual member Name of the Technical Committee Co-chairs Chair: Eddie O'Brien Vice Chair: Dan Greenwood Names of phone meeting sponsors Eddie O'Brien Names of face-to-face meeting sponsors Dan Greenwood Policies and procedures of the Legal Transcripts Technical Committee The Legal Transcripts Technical Committee will follow the operating rules of OASIS and any operating rules adopted by the LegalXML Member Section Steering Committee with the approval of OASIS management and the OASIS Board of Directors. In addition, the Technical Committee will abide by the following practices: 1. All decisions will be made by consensus. 2. All decisions made subject to ratification or rejection by the full membership of the Technical Committee on the list serve. 3. All email discussions concerning the technical work of the Technical Committee and its subcommittees will take place on OASIS supported list serves. 4. One member of the Technical Committee and of each subcommittee will serve as ombudsman to monitor the public list for that entity and provide input from the public list to the committee and subcommittee discussions. 5. In no event shall this Technical Committee finalize or approve any technical specification if the use, distribution, or implementation of such specification would necessarily require the unauthorized infringement of any third party rights, and such third party has not agreed to provide necessary license rights on perpetual, royalty-free, non-discriminatory terms. Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See "Legal XML Working Group."