The courts world is, and has been, a world of paper for 2000 years. The process
of automating courts nationally has been long and difficult. Standards had to be
created because they did not exist. Courts did not see any need to share
information with other agencies therefore there was no method for transmitting
information to other agencies outside of the court.
History and precedence are major parts of the court process, making courts
resistant to change. Courts are based on an adversarial relationship that
depends on all interested parties to make sure that things get done the right
way. Judges and juries deliberate. All of this takes time. Time, in the past,
was always on the side of the court.
Today, that has changed. Our litigious society is overwhelming our court system
with an ever increasing case load. State budgets are strapped. Courts budget
requests are no longer automatically granted. New and innovative automation
methods must be implemented to offset these difficulties. National trends in
court case filings continue upward. In 2005, "For the second consecutive year,
the combined incoming caseloads of state courts in the U.S. and Puerto Rico were
approximately 100 million cases," . . . . an 11 percent increase in incoming
cases reported nationally.
In trial court cases appealed to an Appellate Court, the clerk must prepare a
Record on Appeal (ROA) which may be extremely large, the requirement for the
court clerk to process all of the paperwork generated by the case takes a
significant amount of time. According to the Chief Justice of the Alabama
Supreme Court, "The electronic appeals system will save the courts a tremendous
amount of time. Under the current procedure, the clerks' office must spend
protracted time preparing the record on appeal. Additionally, the clerk's office
must pay significant postal and shipping costs to send the records to the
appellate court. With, the clerk's office will only be required to scan in the
pertinent documents and organize the record on appeal and then submit it to the
appellate court electronically."
|
