[October 02, 2000] The Electronic Filing Standards sub-committee of the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology XML Standards Committee is working with LegalXML.org to develop an XML standard for electronic court filing via the Internet. Within the framework of LegalXML.org, "the Court Filing Workgroup focuses on documents and information exchange formats for electronic court filing applications. The chair of the Court Filing Workgroup is John Greacen (email: aocjmg@nmcourts.com).
History: Following a planning meeting in Santa Fe, NM on August 30-31, 1999, the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) of the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) and the National Association of Court Managers (NACM) formed an E-Filing Standards sub-committee to define a court XML national Standard to allow electronic filing via the Internet. The Electronic Filing Standards sub-committee of the JTC has sponsored a series of meetings, beginning November 4, 1999. "On December 2nd, 1999, the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) of COSCA and NACM officially and unanimously voted to partner with Legal XML to develop XML court filing standards. On January 21st and 22nd, 2000, approximately sixty people attended the second JTC/Legal XML Court Filing Meeting. During the meeting, Donald Bergeron, Lexis-Nexis, led attendees in an exercise aimed at identifying common data elements. The goal of submitting a Phase I, Proposed Standard to the JTC by March 22, 2000 was accomplished. At the March 22nd meeting, the JTC approved and accepted the Proposed Standard." Meetings have been held on May 1-2, 2000 and June 22-23, 2000; a meeting is scheduled for October 16-17, 2000 (Santa Fe, NM)." See the Calendar of Events. [partial cache]
References:
CourtXML Web site at CourtXML.org
Web site alternate URL - www.jointcourtxmlstandard.org
Court Filing Workgroup Website at LegalXML.org
XML Standards Development Project Electronic Court Filing Draft Specification. By Marty Halvorson and Richard Himes, edited by Winchel 'Todd' Vincent III. Date: July 24, 2000. Reference: PS_10001_2000_07_24 . The COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee and Legal XML are partnering to develop Court Filing Standards. This is the second revised version since March 22nd, 2000. The 'proposed' standard it out for comment with COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee until November 1st, 2000. "This Draft Specification provides the XML DTD required for Court Filing. This document is intended to describe the information required for electronic court filing, and the structure of that information. No information regarding the content of the pleading or other legal device (e.g. contracts, orders, judgments, etc) is included, other than that required to accomplish the task. This document is a Proposed Standard collaboratively developed by the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee and the Legal XML Court Filing Workgroup. Portions of this document were derived from the Court Filing Strawman collaboratively developed by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico; New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts; SCT Global Government Solutions, Inc.; and West Group."
XML DTD for 2000-07-24 Draft XML Court Filing. In standard/hierarchical presentation order and alphabetic ordering by element. Cache: standard and alphabetical.
Diagrammatic description of the DTD. June 2000. [cache]
XML Standards Development Project Electronic Court Filing Proposed Standard. Workgroup Name: JTC/LegalXML Court Filing; Workgroup Chair: John Greacen. Version: March 24, 2000. 40 pages. This document is intended to describe the information required for electronic court filing, and the structure of that information. No information regarding the content of the pleading or other legal device (e.g. contracts, orders, judgments, etc) is included, other than that required to accomplish the task. This document is a Proposed Standard collaboratively developed by the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee and the Legal XML Court Filing Workgroup. Portions of this document were derived from the Court Filing Strawman collaboratively developed by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico; New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts; SCT Global Government Solutions, Inc.; and West Group... This document includes a DTD used to validate the syntax of XML documents used for court filing. Annotations appearing inside the DTD, which add further definition and specification shall be binding. . . Each Filing, Query, Receipt, or Response is encapsulated in a standard "shell" called a LegalEnvelope. This shell includes such information as the sender, the recipient, the time and date the message was created, and the MessageIdentification..." Also in .DOC (Word) format.
Proposal for Achieving a Viable Court XML Standard "The Joint Technology Committee (JTC) of the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) and the National Association of Court Managers (NACM) intends to define a court XML national Standard to allow electronic filing via the Internet. The E-Filing Standards sub-committee of JTC will complete and present to the JTC by March 22, 2000 the Phase I Standard outlined below. The JTC will advertise this intent in appropriate journals, invite registrants at CTC 6, invite participation from members of the Forum for the Advancement of Court Technology (FACT), each state's AOC and bar association, and interested entities in the Federal Courts."
Contact for Federal/State Court XML Standard: efiling_xml_standards@osca.state.mo.us
"JusticeLink and CourtLink Announce Support for Legal XML Court Filing Standard. Newly Merged Company Established Leadership in Open Standards." - "JusticeLink, Inc., a leading provider of electronic filing (e-file) solutions for courts, attorneys and their clients, and CourtLink, Inc., the leading nationwide provider of online, real-time access to court records in the United States, today announced their support of the newly established Legal XML Court Filing Standard. The standard was adopted by the Joint Technology Committee of the Council of State Court Administrators (COSCA) and the National Association of Court Management (NACM) at their March meeting in Kansas City last week. The Standard was collaboratively developed by the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee and the Legal XML Court Filing Workgroup. JusticeLink and CourtLink, which announced their intent to merge, participated in the development of the new court filing standard. The Court Filing Standard seeks to establish a consistent method for all U.S. courts to capture electronic filings and the information needed to automatically place them on the dockets in the courts' case management systems. The adopted standard is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), an open standard technology that allows structured documents to be transferred over the Internet in a format that is useable by any XML-enabled system. The first version of the standard defines a 'legal envelope' that contains the filing data, as well as the documents to be filed. The Legal XML Court Filing Working Group had its first joint meeting on December 2, 1999 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. People familiar with standards-making processes have been pleasantly surprised by the speed and quality of the three month effort. According to Millis, this new standard will enable e-file customers to specify that their transactions to and from JusticeLink's high-speed Internet service come to them in this new standard XML format. He also said that neither JusticeLink's nor CourtLink's existing customers will be required to adopt the standard. Additional information about the Court Filing Standard can be found at www.courtxml.org."
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