Artificial Intelligence in the Courts – Inside Out
Coronavirus Kills the Courts – Re-born by AI and Techies
By Jeff J. Horn, Esq.
The need to be competent in technology is no longer an evolutionary concern. It is a matter of immediate survival. Robert Ambrogi, LawSites.com.
I write as if this blog is about the future. This blog is about now. This is the last of eight (8) posts on the Coronavirus and the reborn Courts
Artificial Intelligence in the Courts. The advancements needed in the re-born Court system exist.
I am no technologist. To the contrary, I view this problem from the inside out. Technologists who invent the gadgets and to write the code view the problem from the outside. The outside solutions meet up with the goals of the organization. It’s a painful conflagration. Organizations avoid catching fire.
The coronavirus has set the Court’s afire and there
will be no turning back, from technology and artificial intelligence in the Courts.
A cursory Google search of artificial intelligence in the Courts reveals a mere sense of the number of initiatives underway and the scope of service that Court leaders expect to deploy via AI.
Here is a sample:
- “Artificial intelligence won’t mean the end of the legal industry (or world) as we know it. But neither will it create utopia where new heights of insight and efficiency close the access to justice gap and take much of the guesswork out of the legal profession. The reality of AI’s future, and present, is far more ambiguous and complicated than that.”
AI in the Courts: The Good, the Concerning and the Frightening: A panel at the New York State Bar Association’s Annual Meeting looked at the ways AI can benefit, complicate and stifle the way judges and their Courtrooms work.
Rhys Dipshan, LAW.COM Legal Tech NEWS January 29, 2020
- “In the most ambitious project to date, the Estonian Ministry of Justice has asked [Ott] Velsberg and his team to design a “robot judge” that could adjudicate small claims disputes of less than €7,000 (about $8,000). Officials hope the system can clear a backlog of cases for judges and Court clerks.
[In the US] Stanford University’s David Engstrom, an expert in digital governance, says Estonian citizens might trust the government’s use of their digital data today, but things might change if one of the new AI-based decision-making systems goes awry…
Engstrom and a team of law school and computer science students at Stanford are studying how AI can be better used in US government agencies.
They will soon report their findings to the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency charged with recommending improvements to administrative processes.
He doesn’t see a AI-driven robo-judge coming to US Courtrooms anytime soon. The US has no national ID system and many Americans have an innate fear of Big Government. “We have due process in the Constitution and that has something to say about fully automated decision making by a government agency,” Engstrom said.
“Even with a human appeal, there could be a constraint.” Eric Niler, WIRED, Business 3.25.2019
Can AI Be a Fair Judge in Court?
Estonia deploys Artificial Intelligence in the Courts
… an artificial intelligence program to decide some small-claims cases, part of a push to make government services smarter.
- Deploying automation can make the justice system more accessible for people who don’t have the money for a lawyer or the time for a Court date.
- For instance, at the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in California — the world’s largest Court — Gina the Avatar helps residents handle their traffic citations. Gina knows five languages and helps more than 5,000 customers a month. Gina’s not true AI — she’s programmed to work down predefined paths. Still, she’s laid the groundwork for more sophisticated automation.
- Los Angeles is now working on a Jury Chat Bot project that will leverage true AI, Snorri Ogata, CIO of the LA Superior Court, told ZDNet. It’s being built on top of the Microsoft Cognitive Services platform, leveraging features like natural language understanding, QnA maker (to build “FAQ on steroids,” as Ogata put it) and translation services. The Court is initially focusing its efforts around the jury summons process and will be narrowing the chat dialog universe to known outcomes (such as “retrieve my juror ID” or “request a postponement”).
By Stephanie Condon ZDNet, for Between the Lines | January 22, 2020
- China already has more than 100 robots in Courts across the country as it actively pursues a transition to smart justice. These can retrieve case histories and past verdicts, reducing the workload of officials. Some of the robots even have specialisms, such as commercial law or labour-related disputes. Briony Harris World Government Summit, Senior Writer at Formative Content
- The judicial system continues to express interest in using computer programs to perform tasks humans would normally perform. For example, machine learning, and natural language processing applications can transform judicial processes.
2017 National Conference for State Courts, Joint Technology Committee, Priorities
The technologists are running fast and getting stronger. AI, Court Rules and Rules of Evidence merge in best practices. Coronavirus kills the Courts and needs microchips leveraged by great technologists propels the Courts and Court customers into Ace energy between justice and technology.
Artificial Intelligence in the Courts – Pandemic
“Pandemic!” Not a scary movie, but Chapter 1 of James Altucher’s 2011 book The Wall Street Journal Guide to Investing in the Apocalypse: Make Money by Seeing Opportunity Where Others See Peril.
This coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic is scary in so many ways. From the medical standpoint, it appears that the illness is devastating to those who have become symptomatic. Many people have died and will die. The illness even spreads between people who have no symptoms. The illness has a long incubation period. Some people never get sick and others become dreadfully ill. Hospitals didn’t have enough respirators.
Things like respirators, like all resources in a capitalist economy are inefficiently spread out. There is no formula it says every hospital with 100 beds has 10 ventilators; 200 beds has 25 ventilators. There is no formula. Ventilators are made within the United States and outside the United States. It’s typical supply and demand. There is typically no need to have rational distribution of ventilators. Hospitals and surgery centers buy ventilators as needed or as funding is available. They may keep a couple of extras around. Management 101 teaches that stockpiling expensive equipment is a bad use of resources.
Technology and Demonetization
Physician, writer, entrepreneur and futurist Peter Diamandis writes and speaks the Six D’s “The secret to positively impacting the lives of millions of people is understanding and internalizing the growth cycle of digital technologies. This growth cycle takes place in six key steps, which Peter Diamandis calls the Six Ds of Exponentials: digitization, deception, disruption, demonetization, dematerialization, and democratization.”
This section is about “demonetization.”
Court time is now demonetized. Judges and Court staff essentially trade time for salary. That time includes a massive amount of time waiting around. Waiting for lawyers, waiting for Court customers and waiting for unavailable witnesses. In the legacy Court system, participants needed to show up in a particular location for the Court to do its job. No more.
Artificial Intelligence in the Courts – Saves Big Money
There is no more money in paying Court staff and judges to wait around. Either Court staff and judges will justify their compensation and produce better and quicker Justice or there will be a few of them around. Time is money. Robots don’t waste time.
Courts will be demonetized by governmental action.
Money allocated by local and State governments for Court operations will be diverted toward pandemic preparedness and related initiatives. Precious Court filing fees and fines may even be diverted away from the Courts. The Courts are conceptually a separate governmental branch, but are fiscally integrated with the other two branches. No function of government will avoid the heavy gaze of the budget cutters to budget modifications arising out of the abiding need for pandemic preparedness.
Lawyers have been demonetized. Lawyers sell their services by the hour. Travel time and waiting time cost clients enormous amounts of money. Digital Court appearances suffer very little waiting time and no travel time. Inefficient lawyer time has now been demonetized.
Coronavirus kills the Courts while demonetization and artificial intelligence in the Courts washes away inefficiency.
Court size matters. Bigger Courts tend to grab lots of resources. Smaller Courts operate on a shoestring. In communities where there is a local Court system that only operates for minor violations like traffic offenses, minor criminal activities and citizen disputes,the resources are extremely thin. The resources are probably gone now.
The will to spread out a few dollars across many many small Courts, many small fiefdoms is gone.
Government will need to have plans and facilities and resources locally to handle this pandemic and future pandemics. Redirecting resources from inefficient Courts is an easy call for state and local budget makers. Preparedness will be a political siren call and a genuine imperative for all agencies of government including Courts.
The Courts are implementing technology tools to keep the mature and inefficient system running while it’s mature and inefficient assets are disabled. It is quite understandable that the justice system, the day-to-day administration of the Court operations are wobbly during a pandemic. What will not be acceptable is a lack of preparedness going forward. For the next big event, Courts will be prepared.
Artificial Intelligence in the Courts – Technology Backbone
The technology backbone that has been lurking for years will now have all of its vertebrae adjusted and maintained on a regular basis. There is no going backwards. Technology solutions need to be properly designed. In fairness to everyone, they ought to be rolled out in a sensible way. Court staff and judges have regular training. Their training now will be on the areas of tech expertise and smooth implementation of anything not utilized on a day-to-day basis. In short, preparedness.
The Courts will not be caught unprepared for the next big event.
The Court buildings and the incumbent infrastructure has been completely exposed. The battlefield of constructing an alternate way of running the Court system will mean preparation. Courts are great at building systems that last. Inefficient systems with underutilized resources will not be prepared and will not last.
Combine a few Courts together, deploy Court rooms that are used for a few hours a month for other purposes. Jurisdictions can be regionalized so that every locality does not need a Court building, a judge, a prosecutor and Court staff. It is not because of a pandemic that this will happen. It is the pandemic that pushes its way into the fight for resources and grabs its share.
Artificial Intelligence in the Courts – Replaces Inefficient Courts
Courts must yield to the power of the pandemic when budgets are spread thin. No one can rationally argue that a small and inefficient Court system should remain intact and continue its inefficient operations when those dollars can be deployed and detecting future pandemic events and managing resources to combat its spread and in effect on the population.
I blush as I write these words. Of course, every small jurisdiction will fight to its death to survive intact. It is contrary to human nature and certainly to the lifeforce of bureaucratic organizations to give up resources, power and control over the mission. A made-up town like Smallville is never going to want to give up its power and control over the fees and fines derived from operating a court to the neighboring fictional town Smallburg. “Let Smallburg operate artificial intelligence in the Courts – we like it our way.” Even though each small community uses its Courthouse perhaps (4) hours per month. It is a matter of Community Pride and the elected officials who lead those communities will be vilified if they give up an ounce of power and a penny of revenue.
Small communities, in particular, small Courts will be forced to economize and optimize.
Scarce resources will be redirected to critical missions. The winners will be the small Courts that embrace needed changes, adopt technology and model an optimized and customer service oriented Court experience. Those that fail to keep up will be consolidated or shut down.
Coronavirus kills small Courts and rewards those that optimize.
Artificial Intelligence in the Courts – AMAZON and WALMART
“The delivery giant will add 100,000 workers to meet heightened demand. Most jobs are in delivery and in warehouses.”
InHerSight April 12, 2020.
Who is hiring during a pandemic? Answer – businesses that make their customers experience really convenient and cost-effective. Answer – Amazon and Walmart. Curse them if you will. We complain about Amazon, we gripe about Walmart and we lament those that have been put out of business. The truth is we don’t care.
We want convenience and low price.
These two giants and others have figured out that the right attitude, the right technology and massively integrated systems can deliver loads of goods and services to people where they wanted at a price they are thrilled to pay. Amazon is the business that digitized the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog and ran Sears out of business.
The more apt cousin to the Courthouse is Walmart. The different divisions of the Courthouse can be viewed as a Walmart-like experience. You can purchase food and groceries, lawn equipment, sporting equipment, clothing, housewares and engage with professionals such as pharmacies, optometry and financial services. Walmart gives the consumer a huge menu under one roof. Walmart can deliver services in the store and Walmart can deliver services electronically.
This is what Court customers want.
They want to be able to do their electronic business on demand. Court customers want their electronic business to run extremely smoothly. Treat the Court Customer on a professional level and treat them right. Remember the old greeters at Walmart. They may not be giving hugs anymore.
Certainly, the Courthouse staff should not be giving hugs to Courthouse customers.
The Courthouse should however be a place where the need for low or no cost legal services are met and where the most sophisticated dispute can be resolved or their resolution can be sparked. In either extreme Customers expect, demand and have earned convenience. For an institution like the judiciary to survive and thrive they must run with the mindset like Amazon and Walmart.
Artificial Intelligence in the Courts – Survive and Thrive
Amazon slayed legacy businesses with few highly trained workers, massive efficiency and defined tasks deliver a gazillion goods and services. The Courthouse delivers a much narrower band of products.
Coronavirus kills the Courts like Amazon and Walmart kills inefficient businesses.
People will be disrupted and displaced. The reborn Court system serves our entire society by deploying remote appearance technology, with workflow integration and a commitment to customer education and service public-private partnerships.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and co-author of The Other Side of Innovation, says successful companies tend to fall into three traps … first is the physical trap, in which big investments in old systems or equipment prevent the pursuit of fresher, more relevant investments. There’s a psychological trap, in which company leaders fixate on what made them successful and fail to notice when something new is displacing it. Then there’s the strategic trap, when a company focuses purely on the marketplace of today and fails to anticipate the future. Some unlucky companies manage a trifecta and fall into all three traps.
Rick Newman, U.S. News & World Report Aug. 19, 2010
Every development in artificial intelligence experiences points of resistance. Most times resistance is psychological in nature. An institution has made an enormous time and money in investment in a building or process or technology. Embracing the newer better, cheaper, faster technology means to you that you were wrong to make such an investment. Double down and fight for your previous good idea. You justify by saying “I have put so much time and money into this process, I cannot switch now.” A debilitating example of sunk cost fallacy.
It is the reason that will slow adoption of the myriad technological solutions presented to Court decision makers. Resistance born of the sensation that so many big decisions were wrong. Stop it. It is OK to be wrong in the name big progress and big decisions. “Inquisitive people risk looking like idiots when they are striving to become experts. Inquisitive and creative people also experience the awkwardness of not always knowing the answers and the agitation is having to seek their own Solutions.” Randall Kiser, How Leading Lawyers Think: Expert Insights Into Judgment and Advocacy.
As the Cloud of coronavirus lifts
we will all want to cling on to some part of our mindset and operations that was utterly resonant with us. Compelling one-liners, mantras even will slow progress:
- This is how it has always been done.
- We have the greatest system in the world, bar none.
- The system works, it is stable and steady and reliable.
- This part of it cannot possibly change.
Certainly Eastman Kodak believed they had the greatest way of capturing an image, processing it with chemicals and special paper to produce a photograph that would live forever. We all wanted it and it would never change. Meanwhile, Kodak invented the digital camera. The problem was they already had something great.
Artificial Intelligence Why change?
You cannot even remember the last time he developed a roll of film. One of our country’s greatest corporations went bankrupt in 2012 after 130 years in business. Vanquished by their own invention.Their only assets, ironically the patents that have been licensed by the digital camera revolutionaries who tucked it into a supercomputer called it a smartphone.
Remember those skinny plastic discs that cost $15 or $20 each. You would buy the $20 piece of plastic, called a CD, for one song that you loved. The record company would print the CD at a cost of pennies each, charge you $20 and everybody got rich. Only the consumer got ripped off. Well that song is now virtually free on music streaming services. For $10 bucks per month you get 30 million songs on Spotify.
When’s the last time you bought a CD?
Who will not resist a move to technology, the customers of the Courthouse? They are using the technology every day. Preteens are on social media and at face timing. Why would they consider going to the Courthouse for anything but serious in person business? They will not. It is over. Coronavirus has forced the Courts to implement video conferencing technology.
Artificial Intelligence and Video Conferencing
The rest of society and business has run toward the video conference during this coronavirus lockdown. You’re videoconferencing with your family to catch up and celebrate holidays. You are videoconferencing with a relative you cannot see because of virus risk. Suddenly, videoconferencing with your doctor’s office – telemedicine. Your customers are not going to resist tele-Courts.
Indeed, your customers are going to insist on it. Coronavirus kills the Courts and speedy technology brings it back to life.
Judges are Techies
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”
Judges are techies too. Everyone who watched the OJ Simpson criminal trial saw how judges became techies. Cameras in the Courtroom streamed the entire trial simultaneously all over the globe. We were taught some about DNA evidence. Dream Team attorney Barry Scheck demonstrated just enough DNA Science confidence to neutralize bad handling of DNA evidence. Technology was thrust upon Judge Ito and the viewing public during the OJ trial. The door forced open by the OJ trial has never been closed.
Our experience with the Court’s technological response to the coronavirus has varied. Some would say it is a generational issue. Older judges refuse to embrace technology. That is a cop out. Age and generation is a factor, but not the driving factor. Some seasoned judges have embraced the technology and invited the Court staff and lawyers who are tech adapted to implement solutions.
Judges are smart people and have seen this coming. They know that their effectiveness will be enhanced by the wise use of technology.
Every judge has a computer, tablet and smartphone at home. Judges communicate through electronic means with the Court administration and one another. That has been going on for years. As Courts have adopted electronic filing, judges have adapted. The crop of judges going on the bench in their 40s or even early 50s grew up with personal computing at their fingertips.
While a few of today’s judges may resist adopting things like video conferences for routine matters it will not be because they cannot adapt and adopt. There may be pockets of resisters who like things how they have always been. They will like things about how they were trained and how they have operated since joining the judiciary. It will not be the choice of an individual judge as to how the entire Court system will run. Indeed, judges are far more capable of utilizing technology then they even know today. The techie judges will lead to the other judges.
The techie Court staff will make it easy to roll out electronic filing, secure videoconferencing and workflow so that the judges gain in confidence and competence.
For the tech adverse or tech fearing judge it is simply a matter of the unknown. You like doing something one way and it is by and large effective. That way will always be replaced by another mood of operation. Count on judges to embrace technology today and as our practitioners become judges find them eager to inject the type of tech solutions that made the practice of law and evolving of business align with the mission and function of the judiciary.
One New Jersey Judge has taken the lead in training Court staff and Judges in the effective use of technology. Judge Sohail Mohammed was an engineer who became a lawyer after serving as a juror in a criminal case. His work during the pandemic was featured by Suzette Parmley of ALM in the NJ Law Journal, April 30, 2020. https://www.law.com/njlawjournal/2020/04/30/for-training-others-in-tech-judge-sohail-mohammed-the-right-person-at-the-right-time/?slreturn=20200807202348
Judge Mohammed is a leader from the inside and believer that the roll-out of tech solutions in Courts is “a marriage that you cannot refuse. This is awesome. It’s almost like a dream. I’ve asked myself, ‘Am I dreaming about the technology now in effect with judges?’ Seasoned attorneys are all participating effectively and efficiently. It’s amazing. It’s thrilling to see how legal minds can adapt to change and do their jobs.”
Coronavirus kills the Courts and the spirit of justice still prevails.
Lawyers are Techies
“The first is the notion that machines and systems will work alongside tomorrow’s professionals as partners. The challenge here is to allocate tasks, as between human beings and machines, according to their relative strengths.”
― Richard Susskind, The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
Lawyers are techies. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal trained and worked as a lawyer. He is a key investor in Silicon Valley and perhaps the finest curator of big ideas in the digital realm. Andrew Yang may turn out to be the biggest winner in the 2020 political season. He ran for president as a complete unknown with no public platform or political experience. Yang made a dent and although he withdrew after failing to earn many delegates. His platform is skyhigh. Andrew Yang trained as a lawyer, worked as a lawyer and went on to succeed in tech.
Thiel and Yang see the vast power of technology.
These are merely very high profile lawyers, who made a dent in the world as true techies. Drill all the way down to the lawyer down the street. They know that the Justice system will bend (not break) under the power of artificial intelligence in the Courts. Frankly, a surprising number of lawyers are super techies. My colleague, seasoned practitioner, Vincent Celli testified on my podcast the Bold Sidebar that he could take a computer apart and put it back together. https://www.buzzsprout.com/177728/2726878-a-40-year-career-as-a-matrimonial-lawyer-my-interview-with-vincent-p-celli . That’s a techie.
Practicing lawyers have eagerly embraced commercially available technology. Most embrace the technology that moves their practices along and makes them more efficient. The coronavirus crisis forced everyone to adopt best practices in their offices or homes to stay in touch with clients. Lawyers implemented best practices to appear telephonically or through videoconferencing. Papers are uploaded electronically. It happened in a snap but no one is resisting the leap.
Unexpectedly, the coronavirus has simply unlocked lawyers’ techie instincts.
Indeed, lawyers are by and large way ahead of the Courts and tech abilities. Lawyers will adopt uniform technology standards. As we are in the midst of this learning and building a technology road in the middle of a crisis, I can only picture how smooth the trains will run once things calm down and the system can be built after a bit of design work is put in.
Coronavirus kills the Courts, but energetic lawyers embraced technology to serve their clients and save themselves.
Court Staff are Techies
“New Jersey’s project team ultimately developed approximately 11,000 question/answer “pairs.” Computer generated responses to questions were made available for testing by some 9,000 Court staff over a six month period. The questions/answers were refined for improved accuracy through AI machine learning and a weekly review of system accuracy has continued since the launch of the system in September, 2019.”
Marcus W. Reinkensmeyer, Director, Court Services Division, Administrative Office of the Courts, Arizona Supreme Court
Court staff are Techies
Frustrated techies existed in the bowels of the Court system. They had been putting together networks with bright black screens and green letters managing dockets and building the elements of an electronic Court system. These are the extreme nerds. These techies never saw the light of day and were never tasked with causing disruptive leaps in Court efficiency. Their main job has always been security.
The Court system historically has operated with the idea that a very slow clunky non-user-friendly system is better than the possibility of even the tiniest breach. They built systems so that data cannot be managed. They built systems that did not generate a wide array of reports. Aggregating data is viewed as opening the door to hackers. Certainly, data was not assembled in a manner that can be scraped.
Court techies built systems that require the user to have a lot of fingers.
Microsoft rolled Windows driven by icons in 1990. Legacy Court software sometimes still requires holding down the function (fn) button to switch screens. Court techies built the safe court system. They were proud of the security and okay with making very tiny incremental improvements. At home, these people were whizbang techies building computers when that was the thing and early adopters of all manner of tech wizardry. Before Coronavirus; ambitions were thwarted.
Then you have your case management people. These are can-do people. Most of them are a bad fit to the Court system. These are the people who want to kick a little ass and keep things moving. They work best with judges that like to keep the ball moving and not let inefficiencies interrupt the good flow of the case.
Get a case in, get it figured out and get a case out the door. These people completely embrace technology. Give them faster technology and they will work faster.They will protect the judges from time wasting activities. The case managers will make sure that even the hottest technology is easy for the judges to use.
Artificial Intelligence in the Courts empower the Court Staff
The data entry people will either be re-trained eliminated. When a customer files a case electronically there is not much data input that needs to occur. Someone may need to perform a quality control check on it. Entry-level staff will certainly be capable and willing to do that sort of tech work.
I am gripped by a vision of the super tech nerds, the ones in the basement for the past 40 years, coming out into the light. I see them embracing the supre-secured administered virtual meeting room, matching it with videoconferencing and ensuring everything is properly recorded and catalogued. Then they wrap it together with the holy grail of it all, workflow integration.
Electronic filing comes in and is visible to all of the stakeholders. The case is locked in place in an electronic fashion. A case file does not get misplaced in the judge’s chambers. It doesn’t get put into the archives in error because someone misreads a number on a jacket folder. Commercial vendor software solutions blend into the secure Court environment. The Court staff embraces technology and will ensure that the mission of the Court is fulfilled. Coronavirus kills the Courts and is reborn because Court staff are techies.
Coronavirus Highlights
“People who have good arguments use them. People who do not have good arguments try to win by labeling.”
Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America
by Dilbert Creator – Scott Adams
Adams argues in Loserthink that if you have one good argument stick with it and do not rely upon a laundry list. A laundry list weakens your main argument. As a trained and experienced lawyer it is difficult for me to limit myself to one point strong – here is my best shot. WHAT will happen after Coronavirus Kills the Courts:
The reborn Courts are stripped away of the pain points that limit access to justice.
High level – those pain points are:
- Limit wasted time..
- Educate Court customers.
- Lawyers have more time to help more people at low or no cost.
- Fewer Court customers are judged based upon their ability to get to Court and offer a presentation that does not impair their result.
- Judges and Court staff have time and space to enter flow state and to make better, more thoughtful, consistent and more just decisions.
How?
- Things will be scheduled like restaurants and doctors appointments and airline reservations. Everyone gets time, shows up on time, your case will be handled on time. Things are never eternally backed up again.
- That which can be handled on the phone or on a video will be handled on the phone or on video.
- Lawyer time previously spent waiting is converted to volunteer time; offering low bono and pro bono advice on specific litigation issues.
- Written materials, audios and videos will be ubiquitous for Court customers. Robots will answer almost all of the basic questions posed by the Courts to lawyers and those that would represent themselves.
- In their newfound free time, judges will dive deeper into their cases, deeper into the law books and express their domain expertise like never before.
Corona Conclusion Thoughts
Coronavirus kills the Courts. Coronavirus gestates and rebirths a new Court system. The new Court system takes all of the good stuff from the legacy Court system and assembles it to achieve the universally desired goal of access to justice. The reborn system is a bastion of fairness as viewed through the eyes of an eight-year-old child, an alien and Court insiders. Everyone gets a turn. Everyone gets a little help and a hand up. Every Court customer gets a fair shake. The Court system does crown winners and losers.
Competency, preparation and advocacy will always matter in Court.
No time is wasted idling behind others. Physical Court appearances are limited. You will have no legitimate gripe that the Courts are a bewildering agent of government suppression. The marriage of technology and justice forced together by the crushing effects of the coronavirus created a new reliable and faithful judicial system. Faithful to the blind lady.
Faithful to the rule of law.
https://hornlawgroup.net/meet-jeff-horn/
Related – https://hornlawgroup.net/family-law-court-reborn-after-coronavirus/
Related – Coronavirus Kills the Courts – No. 1 – Empty the Jails – Toms River Divorce Lawyer
Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash
Note: This series 0f blog posts was planted and fertilized to grow into a short book. As with so many creative projects, this one has taken on a life of its own. The pace of change in the court systems handling of cases during the coronavirus lockdown gave me pause. If I write an authoritative and useful book, people will rely upon some of the key takeaways. It is entirely likely that by the time the reader needs to utilize those key takeaways they will be stale, incomplete or plain wrong. Hence, what was enthusiastically pursued as a book project will now be broken down into a series of substantive blog posts. I have extracted wisdom from many sources. A number of people were kind enough to speak with me, offer insights or pen important words as the court system wobbled. Enthusiastic thanks to: John Koufos, Right on Crime, http://rightoncrime.com/author/jgk/; Judge Thomas O’Brien (Ret.) https://www.bathweg.com/hon-thomas-e-obrien.html Judge E David Millard (Ret.), https://www.buzzsprout.com/177728/913390-presiding-judge-corruption-prosecutor-and-mediator-my-interview-with-judge-e-david-millard, Judge Philip Miller, https://www.buzzsprout.com/177728/2647123-municipal-court-judge-and-attorney-my-interview-with-phil-miller, Walter Luers, Esquire http://www.luerslaw.com/, Jack Arsenault, Esquire, https://www.af-lawfirm.com/about-us/jack-arseneault/, Elise Holtzman, Esquire Lawyer’s Edge, https://www.thelawyersedge.com/elise-holtzman/, Randall Kiser, Esquire, http://www.kiserbooks.com/, Ron Gaboury, CEO, Yorktel, https://www.yorktel.com/press-releases/ronald-gaboury-elected-ceo-york-telecom-corporation/;
Chris Draper, PhD, TROKT https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherhdraper/and Suzette Parmley, ALM, New Jersey Law Journal https://www.law.com/njlawjournal/author/profile/Suzette-Parmley/ who contributed my directly helping me or upon whom I eavesdropped and now parlay shared wisdom here.