Author: recovery_x970td

Kenneth J. Withers, Deputy Executive Director of the Sedona Conference is pleased to share this announcement of interest to NASJE members and court personnel around the country.

The Sedona Conference is pleased to announce the publication of The Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation: Resources for the Judiciary, Third Edition (“Judicial Resources”). This publication, available free for individual download, provides state and federal trial judges with a comprehensive but easy-to-follow guide to eDiscovery case management. Readers may obtain their free copy of the Judicial Resources at the The Sedona Conference website.

In addition, The Sedona Conference will sponsor a 90-minute webinar on Thursday, September 10, 2020 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. In this webinar, a panel of judges who participated in updating the Judicial Resources will discuss some of the thinking that went into compiling this set of judicial case management strategies and walk us through the unique format of the Judicial Resources, touching on:

• identifying the points in the litigation process where judicial involvement is required or would be helpful;
• anticipating the issues that may give rise to disputes between the parties, and suggesting strategies for avoiding them or resolving them fairly and expeditiously;
• identifying and analyzing the factors judges are required to consider when making decisions regarding proportionality, cost and burden, or the reasonableness of a discovery request or response, and assigning the appropriate burdens of coming forward or of proof between the parties; and
• recognizing the exceptional circumstances under which a party might be sanctioned for the loss of discoverable ESI, the failure to produce requested ESI, or other discovery-related misconduct.

Registration for this webinar is free to all judges and court staff. Attendees who have already have a Sedona Conference username and password may register for free at thesedonaconference.org. Those who do not yet have a username and password should email info@sedonaconference.org from their court or government email address to obtain a “coupon code,” reducing the registration fee to $0.

This is the first revision of the Judicial Resources since 2014 and reflects amendments to state and federal eDiscovery rules, developments in case law, and advances in technology. This edition appears at a particularly important time, as almost all day-to-day business and personal activities are taking place online, generating an unprecedented volume and variety of electronically stored information (ESI) that may be subject to discovery in later litigation. The Judicial Resources is structured around 20 stages of civil litigation when judicial management is most appropriate or desirable. For each stage, the Judicial Resources:

• identifies key issues that a judge is likely to face at each stage of litigation;
• suggests strategies for case management or dispute resolution that encourage the parties, when possible, to reach a cooperative resolution at each stage;
• provides exemplar court decisions or orders; and
• recommends further readings on the issues presented at each stage that have been published by The Sedona Conference or are peer-reviewed.

The Judicial Resources is the product of a two-year effort to assemble case law and materials that bear on case management and incorporates the advice and significant contributions of our Judicial Review Panel: Hon. Helen C. Adams (S.D. Iowa), Hon. J. Michelle Childs (D.S.C.), Hon. Timothy S. Driscoll (N.Y. Sup. Ct.), Hon. Xavier Rodriguez (W.D. Tex.), and Hon. Elizabeth M. Schwabedissen (Fla. 11th Jud. Cir.).

The Judicial Resources may be downloaded and posted on any secure “judges and court staff only” web site for further distribution. In addition, the editorial team for the Judicial Resources, as well as several other experienced state and federal judges, have volunteered to serve as faculty for state or local judicial education programs on eDiscovery and related civil litigation matters.

Texas Municipal Courts Face of Justice Project

By Emily LaGratta, LaGratta Consulting, LLC & Mark Goodner, General Counsel and Director of Education, Texas Municipal Courts Education Center

The Texas Municipal Courts Education Center partnered with the Center for Court Innovation and Emily LaGratta (now of LaGratta Consulting LLC) to develop the “Texas Municipal Courts Face of Justice” project to advance the conversation around how courts can implement procedural justice. Procedural justice research shows that how court users are treated can help build trust and improve compliance with court orders through four key elements: voice, respect, neutrality, and understanding.

The project examined two often-hidden touchpoints that many courts have with the public: first, court websites, and second, courthouse walls. Each presents opportunity for court leadership to prioritize fairness and ensure that the court’s messaging to the court users and the public at large are consistent with the messages delivered by the professionals who work there.

In making a case for better courthouse signage, the toolkit outlines the challenge that most physical spaces of our country’s courts vary greatly. Their size, layout, infrastructure, functionality, and décor are as diverse as the communities they serve. Despite this variation, there are common concerns that unite almost all courts. Namely, all courthouses benefit from messaging to those who enter their doors. Priorities like security and wayfinding are common to both a small rural courthouse in Texas and a large urban courthouse in New York. Rarely, however, do the courthouse walls – including its signage – support court professionals in conveying to court users the information they need in the most effective and fair means possible. This is certainly not because those court professionals do not care about what the public thinks, but rather that design, aesthetics, and professionalism have often been relegated to something akin to luxury in a system that is constantly asked to do more with less.

So the signage toolkit sets out to help judges and other criminal court practitioners improve courthouse signage by showing examples of promising signage implemented in real courthouses around the country, and then suggest some planning steps for those who pursue a similar endeavor. Some of the signage samples included are court-specific – such as a building directory – so they do not have utility as an off-the-shelf resource, but rather are intended to give ideas for future, localized designs. But for other signs, such as those that convey typical courtroom rules or notices about court procedures, the samples provided may have direct applicability. High resolution images of those are provided in the toolkit appendix for use and reproduction.

Regarding improved court websites, the rationale for and resulting resource provided are similar. Many courts, even small or rural courts, have a website, but their quality and capacity vary. Perhaps in particular, municipal courts often have the most limited resources to dedicate to serving the public online and make meaningful investments in their websites from the user experience perspective. Courts in small, rural jurisdictions may rely on one individual judge or magistrate to maintain their website, while courts in bigger cities may rely on their city’s information technology department.

While most of these websites are designed and maintained by well-intentioned court professionals, language tends to be jargon-heavy and can fail to strike the right balance of quantity and quality of information. Some overly focus on the payment of fines and fees, perhaps shortcutting a process that should also assert the rights of defendants to plead not guilty and contest their charges. Others simply offer very little content because of limited resources and attention. But as responses to COVID-19 have shown, websites can be an essential method to provide up-to-date information to the public, in addition to facilitating court business more directly, whether scheduling hearings or submitting paperwork online.

The website toolkit was developed to help court practitioners and other professionals who support court websites make improvements guided by procedural justice principles. The core content of the toolkit is organized by a handful of key website components that were identified during project planning to be of highest priority to the broadest range of courts, such as the home page and payment pages. Recommendations are presented in two ways: first, through screenshots of a model website prototype for a fictional municipal court, and second, through screenshots of real courts in Texas that pilot tested the prototype. Lessons from the pilot efforts in these Texas jurisdictions are embedded throughout.

Sample website content

Pilot site website content

The toolkits may be accessed at:

• http://www.tmcec.com/files/9215/6208/6902/Building_Trust__Confidence_Through_Model_Websites.pdf
• http://www.tmcec.com/files/3215/6209/0117/If_Walls_Could_Talk_-_Signage_Toolkit_6.28.19.pdf

Together, the hope is that these products can help inspire courts to put procedural justice into practice in small but meaningful ways. Might better court websites help turn a simple online engagement into an opportunity to build trust between the public and courts? Could better signs help courts move the needle in improving court users’ experience and therefore support their legitimacy? By tackling these questions, the aim is for courts to have new tools to improve procedural justice and perceptions of fairness.

TMCEC and LaGratta Consulting LLC have since paired up for a new, related project: “We Want to Hear From You!: Municipal Courts Survey Kiosk Project.” The goal of the project is to explore another key dimension of procedural justice, namely, soliciting regular input from court users about their experience. Inviting feedback not only gives voice to court users, but also equips courts with powerful user-driven data measures to inform needed changes. Project staff have selected seven municipal courts throughout Texas to collect brief feedback from court users over a three-month pilot period. Feedback will be collected in real-time through tablet kiosks stationed in high-traffic areas of the courthouse, as well as after email communications with the court and remote court appearances, testing questions such as “Did the court treat you fairly today?” Project staff will develop a national toolkit documenting lessons by early 2021.

These projects would not be possible without the support of the State Justice Institute and the many court leaders who volunteer their time and energy to advise during the planning period and pilot test the project tools. Project staff thanks Stephanie Yim for her user experience and design expertise and for developing the project’s website prototype.

By Ben Barham, Arkansas

Before giving you the highlights of what the Education Committee has been doing, I’d like to take a moment to marvel at where we are today. In a few long months, I feel like all the things I’ve generally relied on as certainties are, well, uncertain. As an educator, what can we say right now? Who are we? We are flying turbulent skies, in an old plane, over enemy territory, at night, upside down, and the flight manual just fell out the window. That’s what it FEELS like, right? The conferences and courses canceled, we don’t know when they are coming back, we don’t know how to plan because we don’t know what the future holds, and on top of everything else, we are suddenly IT specialists? Zoom gurus? Communications delivery wizards? Website content creators? Video conferencing facilitation experts? Finders of solutions? Islands of misfit toys?

Some of you were already these things, but whoever you are now, whatever you just read, said “Yes!” to, here is the good news – now is the time you and your skills are required. The judiciary needs what you do -all your talent, drive, energy, and ingenuity. People are looking for guides and teachers and resources. And we know how to do that!

How many times in your profession have you thought, “If I just had the opportunity, I’d seize the controls and start flying in the right direction.” Well, friends, welcome to your moment. We can fly this old plane right into the storm, and we can land it at our future destination newer, leaner, and more effective than it was. We’ll fix it in the air if we must. We’ve anticipated what has needed to happen for a while now.  

What judicial educators have accomplished through collaboration, invention, and sheer willpower is astounding and should be honored. Thank you for all you do to ensure that the judiciary is strong these days. You are heroes, even if you may not think it or receive recognition. You are finding the ways that the community stays intact, in touch, and informed. We are all in.

Your Education and Curriculum Committee has engaged in three separate areas over the last year. First, we have been working to create an RFP for the online Fundamentals of Our Profession Course. For those who have benefitted from this foundational training (typically offered before the opening of our annual conference), this course is imperative from the beginning of judicial education careers. It has never been ideal to provide the course only at the annual conference. We envision a more immediate impact by offering the Fundamentals course digitally. Now, more than ever is the time to make that happen.

Second, the Conference Committee engaged in our standard review of conference proposals. There were excellent proposals this year, and often those discussions are some of the most stimulating and inspiring exchanges I have. I’m very proud of the recommendations we submitted.

Third and finally, we have continued our callinar series. Our first callinar concerned a look back at the Myers-Briggs personality test and its efficacy in professional evaluation and training. Our upcoming callinar is symbolic of the overall change in our profession and society generally in that it is a “Zoominar,” where we will be offering Delivering Training & Education During a Pandemic. With the cancellation of live events, our work changed in a myriad of ways. Several colleagues will share the lessons they have learned in moving towards alternative education options. Attendees will be able to ask questions and share their own experiences as well. This ability to share experiences is the hallmark of what I believe we all want from our NASJE experience. We hope you will join us Thursday, July 30 @ 2:00 Eastern, 1:00 Central, Noon Mountain, and 11:00 Pacific. For more information, go to the Member Area of the NASJE website.

Ben Barham is the Director of Judicial Branch Education at the Administrative Office of the Courts in Little Rock, AR. He previously served as a law clerk to Judge Morgan “Chip” Welch in the Pulaski County Circuit Court and as a Deputy Prosecutor in the 6^th Judicial Circuit. Ben serves as Co-Chair of the NASJE Education Committee and has been a member of NASJE since 2007. Ben received his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and his juris doctor from the University of Arkansas – Little Rock.