THE PROCEEDINGS
OF
THE FIRST ANNUAL INSTITUTE
ON
COURTROOM TECHNOLOGY

TUCSON
MAY 1995

We are proud to present to you the proceedings of the first annual insitute on Courtroom Technology. The Agenda of the Conference follows. The talks given by our outstanding speakers were transcribed in real time by Patti Calabro of Calabro Reporting Service, Tucson, Arizona. Phone: 520-798-1808

Winton Woods

Program and Information
First Annual Institute
on
Technology In the Courtroom
Sponsored By:
University of Arizona College of Law
Courtroom of the Future Project

Winton Woods, Director

May 5-6, 1995


PROGRAM OF ACTIVITIES 

Friday, May 5, 1995 (At the Courtroom of the Future-UofA College of Law)

8:30 am   Welcome and Description of Institute Activities
              Thomas Sullivan, Dean, College of Law    
          Winton Woods, Courtroom of the Future Project Director
     
9:00 am   Vance Opperman, President, West Publishing Company--Topic: 
                                   Electronic Access to Courts
     
10:00 am  Coffee Break

10:30 am  Joseph Cotchett, Esq. San Mateo--Topic:
                                   Lessons from the Keating case

11:30 am  Question & Answer Period
                    
12:00 noon     Lunch at the Law College

 1:00 pm  Introduction to the Courtroom Technologies--Winton Woods

 1:30 pm  Demonstration of  the Courtroom--Group A

               Michael Arkfeld, Assistant United States Attorney, Phoenix
               Thomas Elke, Esq., Palo Alto, California
               Robert Palmer, Esq., Phoenix, Arizona

1:30 pm   Group B evaluation with GroupSystems in Decision Support Center

3:15 pm   Demonstration of  the Courtroom--Group B

               Robert Palmer, Esq., Phoenix, Arizona
               Thomas Elke, Esq., Palo Alto, California
               Michael Arkfeld, Assistant United States Attorney, Phoenix
                                             
3:15 pm   Group A response with GroupSystems in Decision Support Center
          
5:00 pm   Concluding Comments--Winton Woods

7:00 pm        Dinner Keynote Speaker: 
               Brian O'Neill, Esq., Lead Plaintiffs' Counsel in the 
                    Exxon-Valdez case on "The Role of Courtroom 
                    Technology in the Exxon-Valdez Litigation"









Saturday, May 6 (At the DoubleTree Hotel)
     
8:00 am   Breakfast at DoubleTree Hotel

8:30 am   Summary of Results from GroupSystems V collaboration
                    Winton Woods

8:45 am   Round table: The Impact of Presentation Technology 
                            from the Litigator's perspective:                   
                    Robert Palmer, Esq.-- Phoenix
                    Michael Arkfeld, Esq.-- Phoenix
                    Dan McAuliffe, Esq.-- Phoenix
                    Thomas Elke, Esq.--Palo Alto
                    Brian O'Neill, Esq.--Minneapolis

10:00 am      Presentations on Research Topics
                                                  
          1. The impact of presentation technology on the trial process 
               Gordon Bermant--Director of Technology, 
                    Federal Judicial Center, Washington D.C.
                    
          2. Evidentiary issues in the technologically advanced courtroom
               Tom Mauet and John Strong--Professors of Evidence
                    University of Arizona
                    
          3. Court Rules on use of Technology: A National View                       John Greacen--United States Bankruptcy Court                               District of New Mexico.
                    
12:00 noon     Lunch on Your Own

1:30 pm   Open House at the Courtroom of the Future--Displays of new            Technologies and Systems, hands on experimentation, and general 
          discussion of technology and processes with Staff, Corporate Partners
          Students and Lawyers.
          

4.00 pm   Conference Closed

The Courtroom of the Future
at the
University of Arizona College of Law

In the Spring of 1994 the University of Arizona began its Courtroom of the Future Project. The Courtroom of the Future Project has two components. The first is a fully functional demonstration and training facility for courtroom computing. The second is the creation of a Law Office of the Future in which we will develop applications and processes for the integration of computer technology into law practice. In addition to its training functions however, the courtroom facility will allow for various kinds of academic empirical inquiry into the use of technology in the courtroom. We intend to study such important issues as how jurors respond to various kinds of technology, and how technology can increase the efficiency of the trial process. In addition, the project will address various kinds of courtroom design considerations. We are very aware of the need to prevent having technology overwhelm the courtroom by fundamentally changing its deliberative and adjudicative atmosphere and we are always aware of the need to design facilities that are accessible to those with disabilities.

The Training Function

The Courtroom of the Future Project is in the process of developing a variety of training processes. Obviously we are committed to training our law students to be fully conversant with the use of technology in the courtroom. Nevertheless, beyond that we see an equally important professional training dimension. Many, if not most, of the lawyers in active practice came to the practice at a time when technology played a very small role in the profession. There has, of course, been a dramatic change in the last few years and many lawyers over thirty feel left out of that process. The project has thus committed itself to providing a facility for the retraining of practicing lawyers in the role that technology plays in the profession. We are fully sensitive to the high anxiety levels that the prospect of such retraining can produce and we commit ourselves to providing training programs that offer a benign and supportive environment for the development of these radically different skills.

The Elements of Courtroom Technology

At the core of the modern technological courtroom is the integration of modern computerized presentation technologies into the trial process. Digitally based presentation technologies have led to the development of new kinds of demonstrative evidence. Those same technologies, however, can substantially enhance the presentation of traditional evidence, while at the same time promoting effective organization of and access to information in the courtroom. Documents and exhibits can be scanned onto a computer disk and then presented to the trier of fact on a large screen or monitors placed throughout the courtroom. The O.J. Simpson trial in Los Angeles has brought this kind of documentary presentation into the public consciousness and its effectiveness has been widely conceded.

Of equal importance, however, is the fact that all of the paper that is normally used in a trial can be scanned onto computer disks and accessed with the computer instead of by hand. Computerized access to documents stops the endless shuffling through banker's boxes full of papers. What is more important, however, is the end to the problem created when a document is lost or mislaid during the trial. Indeed, the entire trial record can be placed on the CD-ROM making it much less expensive and far more accessible for purposes of appellate review.

One of the exciting dimensions of modern courtroom technology is the use of real time court reporting. Real time court reporting uses a computer with the traditional court reporter's testimony recordation system. In a real time court reporting system, however, the testimony is fed to a computer screen on a continuous basis and there is never need to ask the reporter to reread a question. Moreover, because the daily trial transcript can be downloaded directly to the trial lawyer's computer, it is immediately accessible in both the courtroom and elsewhere using modern search technology. A lawyer may remember that a witness used a particular word or series of words in their testimony and can reach that precise testimony almost instantaneously. In addition real time transcription can reduce the error rate in court reporting because it instantaneously reveals mistakes and misunderstandings.

Real time court reporting can also be tied to the videographing of court proceedings. The real time court reporting system and the videography system can be coordinated so that the court and the lawyers have instant computer access not only to the text of particular testimony, but to its image and sound as well.

In addition to the videography of trials, pretrial matters, such as depositions, witness statements, and the recreation of events as demonstrative evidence, are powerful enhancements of the trial process. A recalcitrant witness can be confronted not only with the text of prior testimony but with the video image and sound of that testimony as well. Videotape depositions are increasingly common and are very widely viewed in an efficient and fair way of presenting deposition testimony in a variety of circumstances.

The Virtual Courtroom

Technologies described above can support the development of virtual courtrooms where the participants in the proceeding are brought together by electronic means. While such a virtual courtroom has obvious limitations, it has obvious benefits as well. For many routine matters, hearing in a virtual courtroom is likely to be far more efficient than the traditional process. Even for such things as major motion practice and depositions, the use of virtual courtroom space may greatly enhance the efficiency with which proceedings are carried out. At a more mundane level the electronic filing of documents is very quickly becoming a reality in many court clerk's offices. Electronic filing of documents can promote efficiency and save space and expense.

Law Office Technology

Courtroom technology, of course, cannot exist without greatly enhancing the use of technology in the law office. Word processing, once exotic, has become ubiquitous. The fax machine, which only a few years ago, was rare, is now an absolute necessity for modern practice. Currently, several major companies are developing new satellite based telephonic systems that will make today's cellular phones obsolete and will extend the capacity of modern video conferencing to the entire world. Clearly the world in which we practice is getting dramatically smaller by the minute and the project believes that these changes are things to which the law school should address itself.

To that end, the project will address many law office technologies, including the following:

 Video Conferencing and Collaborative Technologies. The use of technology to collaborate on various issues and documents in real time is the wave of the near future. Already, such technologies exist in the local area network enviroment and they are very quickly being brought to more widely distributed users. The use of video conferencing technology to hold meetings, take depositions and adminster hearings is an exciting dimension to the practice at the end of the century and into the next. The GroupSystems for Windows System which we will use in this conference will be an important part of that study and development and the collaboration of the nationally recognized technology programs at the Business school next door will be of great value to our project.

 Paper Control and Imaging. It has been estimated that the use of paper in the average mid-sized to large law office amounts to over one ton of paper per lawyer per year. As a matter of function and environmental policy, there is an obvious need to develop and implement advanced methods of paper control. Through the use of computer imaging and modern database technology, electronic storage and retrieval of documents is becoming safe, inexpensive and easy to use.

 Workflow Strategies. Once a document imaging system has been built in a law office it then becomes imperative to develop various so-called workflow strategies. Workflow strategies can be designed to image a document immediately upon its receipt by the office and then distribute that document to the various units within the law office that have a need to know of its contents. Thus, a copy of a pleading could be electronically distributed to a case file, to the responsible lawyer, to the docket control clerk, and to the general client file in a matter of seconds without the use of a single piece of paper or file cabinet space. The Courtroom of the Future Project believes that the development of workflow strategies is absolutely critical to the integration of technology into the law office context and we intend to expend substantial energy in this direction in the coming years.

 Voice recognition technology promises to revolutionize the way that documents are created as well as the way systems are accessed and manipulated. West Publishing Company has made the project a Beta Test Site for the development of their LawTalk technology and we hope to be at the forefront of that development.

 We will continue to provide help and assistance in the selection of hardware and software through the Law Office Computing column and the Law Office Computing Bulletin Board (520-621-4353).

Multimedia in the Law Office Environment

One of the most exciting prospects for the use of technology in law practice can be found in the integration of sound and video into traditional legal documents. Briefs can now contain video and sound clips that are accessed by the click of the mouse. Presentations to the court and clients can now include the full range of video sound and visual displays that are increasingly common in modern life. The development of modern visualization techniques can provide dramatic new ways of understanding various events and phenomenon.

Questions of Life Style

All of the technologies that we have been discussing have important impacts upon the life style of lawyers. Because we are less bound to the office, we have the opportunity to develop new and exciting ways of integrating our business and personal activities. Already we are starting to hear about "virtual" law firms that do not operate from a traditional office and whose participants are geographically disbursed from one another. This is a revolutionary change in the way lawyers practice law and the study of it implicates other disciplines, such as sociology, psychology and economics. Indeed, at a very important level the development of the virtual law firm raises profound questions about our professional self-image and our personal lives. In many ways, these concerns may be the most important of all of the things we do. We intend to utilize the outstanding capacities of the University of Arizona and the College of Law to provide us with full academic support for our inquiries into these areas.

Our Corporate Partners

This project has come into existence during a time of unprecedented funding problems. In all of higher education the need for support for new technology is very high and the availability of money is very low. This project simply could not have come into being without the strong support of our Corporate Partners who have provided counsel, money and products for the use of the Courtroom. We deeply appreciate their contributions and we look forward to working with them in the future. Here is a list of those who have made contributions:

--West Publishing Company provided cash and services of various kinds. Much of the basic equipment in the Courtroom was purchased with their support.

--nView Corporation provided the high powered Luminator Projection System that displays various images on the large screen at the back of the Courtroom.

--Boeckeler Instruments, Inc. provided technical counsel and the PointMaker video illustration system that allows annotation of documents and images in real time.

--Work Production Service provided technical counsel and the system integration that allows the various display technologies to work together.

--Extron Electronics provided the switching and cabling that integrates the system and the scan doubler that allows composite video to be shown on the NEC monitor system.

--Stewart Filmscreen provided the large projection screen that they design to perform under high ambient light situations.

--NEC Technologies provided large presentation monitor that you see embedded in front of the bench in the Courtroom.

--Microsoft Corporation provided software and hardware used in developing the programs that run in the Courtroom and Law Office of the Future.

--Iomega Corporation provided portable drive technology that is used to move large files from the Pentium Computer to other computers in the Courtroom

--Watermark Software, Inc. provided Watermark Professional Edition that is the image distribution and annotation software used in the courtroom to show images of documents.

--Bear Rock Technologies provided the bar code technology that the Project uses to access images with bar codes.

--FTG Data Systems provided the PenDirect light pen system that permits all mouse functions to be run with a light pen on a CRT monitor.

--Cheetah Systems and Calabro Reporting Services provided real-time court reporting systems and services for the Project and Conference.

--Howrey & Simon provided cash support for the conference.

--NightRider Imaging Service provided document scanning , CD-ROM burning and other imaging support for the Project.

--CALI/NCAIR provided cash support for the development of training programs for courtroom technology.

--Micro Solutions Inc. provided the BackPack portable CD-ROM drive that it used to allow the portable computers in the Courtroom to access images on CD-ROM.

--Interactive Media Technologies provided advanced system integration devices.