Ep. 28 Technology In The Courts

Technology is changing at a rapid pace, and judicial systems here in Tennessee and around the U.S. are finding innovative ways to keep up, from positive uses of AI, to civic education, to improved access to justice, data access, and more. In this episode--recorded at the 2024 Conference of Chief Justices in Nashville, Tennessee--Justice Sarah Campbell interviews Chief Justice Mary R. Russell of Missouri, Chief Justice Elissa Cadish of Nevada, Chief Justice Elizabeth Clement of Michigan, and Chief Justice Ann Timmer of Arizona about how new technologies have been implemented in their respective states. 

This episode is for all audiences.

Produced by David Stripling, Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts 

Transcript

00;00;00;04 - 00;00;28;00
Voice Over
Welcome to Tennessee Court today. This episode is a discussion about technology in the courts. Your host is Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Sarah Campbell, and she welcomes a panel of chief justices from around the United States to discuss how their respective judicial systems are handling the ever changing world of technology from positive uses of artificial intelligence to improved access to justice, to civic education, to making data and court proceedings more readily available, and. The different.

00;00;28;00 - 00;00;49;20
Voice Over
Ways states are innovating. Recorded at the 2024 Conference of Chief Justices in Nashville, Tennessee. Justice Campbell talks tech with Chief Justice Mary R Russell of Missouri, Chief Justice Alyssa Kadish of Nevada, Chief Justice Elizabeth Clement of Michigan, and Chief Justice Ann Timmer of Arizona. Here's your host, Justice Sarah Campbell.

00;00;49;27 - 00;01;15;17
Justice Campbell
Welcome, everyone, to Tennessee Court today. We are in for a treat today. We have here as guests for Supreme Court justices, three of whom are chief justices of their respective state supreme courts. Today's topic is technology in our state's judicial systems to get things started. I want to begin with a high level question why should we care about technology in our court systems?

00;01;15;18 - 00;01;40;13
Justice Cadish
Well, it's our job in serving the public to do the best we can to administer justice in a way that's fair and efficient and allows access to justice for all. What again? And so, at this point in time, technology is an important part of that, not only making available our decisions through various technological, tools that are available, but to allow them to file things.

00;01;40;13 - 00;01;52;20
Justice Cadish
And it would seem sort of in the dark ages to require everybody to be mailing in everything they're filing anymore to have what, signatures? At least that's how it seems from my perspective.

00;01;52;22 - 00;01;55;14
Justice Campbell
Thank you, Justice Kadish. Anyone else want to weigh in?

00;01;55;18 - 00;02;18;01
Justice Russell
I agree entirely with that. I would add that, I'm really excited about the usefulness of technology as far as solving some of the problems we have with our legal deserts that I think really in all of our states, we have we have the haves and the have nots. And if you're in an urban area, you sometimes have greater access to the court system than you do if you live in a rural area.

00;02;18;04 - 00;02;43;22
Justice Russell
Technology can solve that and has a great, I think, great capability of evening the playing field, so to speak, for people. So that's very exciting. And it provides efficiency in how we do our jobs. We can do things so much faster because of the advantages of technology. We know it also and it provides transparency so the public can see what we do and have more confidence. The more knowledge they have about how we do our jobs.

00;02;43;23 - 00;03;10;08
Justice Clement
In Michigan. We've found that court users, you know, they don't want to be coming to the courts. They're usually having something going on in their life that requires them to interact with the court system. And technology is a way to give them faith in that system, but also address the realities of their lives, which is it's difficult to leave work, it's difficult to get childcare. And so with with court technology, we can make the the user experience that much better.

00;03;10;12 - 00;03;32;13
Justice Campbell
I think technology is something that court systems across the country are thinking carefully and deeply about, and how we can have harness it and use it effectively to improve the experience of litigants and and others who interface with the system. I'd love to hear more about ways in which your states have successfully embraced technology in recent years.

00;03;32;16 - 00;03;52;14
Justice Russell
In Missouri, one program that we're really proud of is called Case Net, in case that allows the public to have access to all public cases and documents at all levels of the court, from our municipal courts all the way to the Supreme Court. So every single court in our state is connected to case net. So it's a popular tool that people want to perhaps see it.

00;03;52;14 - 00;04;15;20
Justice Timmer
Particular litigant has any judgments against them as the lawsuits pending against them. If you're the dating field, you might want to check and see if this woman or ban is appropriate to date. If you're a landlord, you might want to check to see if they have any judgments against them. For unpaid rent. So, we're not aware of any other state that has this kind of public case information system that any member of the public can get on now.

00;04;15;22 - 00;04;55;27
Justice Cadish
We don't have in Nevada, we don't have a unified court system. And so while we're sort of the head of the state judiciary, it's really just by virtue of the bully pulpit, if you will, and rulemaking. So the Supreme Court, for some time in our appellate courts have had the availability young line of our decisions. And during Covid, we made available all the briefing and filings that had happened in a case, to the public, to the public facing part of our website and the courts in our most populous counties, Clark County, where Las Vegas is, is by far the biggest population.

00;04;56;00 - 00;05;33;08
Justice Cadish
And then Washoe County, where Reno is. Both of those have had electronic filing for some time now, but as was referenced in terms of legal deserts, we also have some difficulties in with the courts in the rural areas having the resources and the motivation, perhaps to get up to speed on on making available the filings electronically. And we're now currently in the process of approving a system we're making available as a resource for the Supreme Court, an e-filing system that can be established and used by all the courts statewide.

00;05;33;14 - 00;05;59;19
Justice Cadish
We've rolled that out now with some of the courts. So instead of like forcing them to do something, we're saying, okay, now we have it available, you know, come sign up. And we're actually considering some rules next week in a public hearing that are going at least as proposed, would require e-filing to be available in all the courts throughout the state. So that'll be a big step if we're able to make it happen.

00;05;59;19 - 00;06;29;01
Justice Clement
You know, we're we're doing very similar things in Michigan with our e-filing and rolling that throughout the state. And we have really committed to, since the pandemic to remote, hearings, we've always at Supreme Court have always posted all of our oral arguments on on YouTube, but we got 900 licenses for judges and magistrates during the pandemic. And we're I think we were the first state to to get everybody to, you know, to get all of the courts up and running remotely.

00;06;29;06 - 00;06;52;03
Justice Clement
We continue that work. We we've passed rules to allow for hybrid and remote hearings to continue that service to the public with, you know, mixed results. We hear, you know, both positive and negative, depending on what type of case, what type of litigants and needing to stay on top of that and get that feedback so that we're responding to not just the court users, but works around the state as well.

00;06;52;06 - 00;07;12;04
Justice Cadish
It seems like during the pandemic, I've heard it said that we had ten years worth of innovation in about a month, and I think that's true, and there's no going back at this point. The public has gotten a taste of virtual appearances and e-filing and all of that, and they want more. Our funding issues, be damned. You know, they they want it go go forward.

00;07;12;06 - 00;07;38;16
Justice Cadish
I'll bring up another aspect of technology, and that is people's ability to participate in jury service. We had a lot of innovation in the area of virtual questionnaires. So you can start your jury selection while they're at home and screen people out. We have one county that still continues to do their grand juries entirely virtually. It's a county that is bigger than some states back east, and the distances are just vast.

00;07;38;23 - 00;07;57;16
Justice Cadish
And if you're called in jury duty, if you live in some place like Colorado City to get to Kingman, you have to go through Nevada, drive down, and it's a four hour driving distance. That's that's quite a burden for people. So they have done they've had tremendous success with juries being done grand juries and jury selection mostly being done virtually.

00;07;57;16 - 00;08;13;27
Justice Cadish
And I think that they will keep that up. And we're going to expand on that with case specific questionnaires to enable people to minimize the time they have to spend coming down to the course, which I don't understand why or why doesn't love to come down to a court, but apparently they don't.

00;08;13;29 - 00;08;36;22
Justice Campbell
But Chief Justice Clement and Justice Timmer are you both mentioned ways in which the pandemic accelerated your adoption of technology in perhaps the public's expectations about technology? I'd love to hear any thoughts that Chief Justice Russell and Chief Justice Kadish have about the pandemic in particular, and how that affected technology use in your states.

00;08;36;28 - 00;08;57;05
Justice Russell
Well, I think likewise for what both the chiefs from Michigan and the chief to be in Arizona have said, we've seen the same thing, you know, for proceedings that do not require the sort of a witness, the taking of evidence. They're very commonplace in our trial courts and and very popular. It's something that I'm so I don't think we ever go back from either.

00;08;57;05 - 00;09;14;00
Justice Russell
But, you know, it really saves someone for having to make a court appearance when they can maybe just go to the break room and take leave during the middle of the workday, or maybe from the comfort of their home, or to go out to their car and leave work and make the call into the courthouse and have some privacy.

00;09;14;00 - 00;09;23;23
Justice Russell
But it's those kind of conveniences that I never imagined before. But they work and justice is done and due process is followed. And it's a win win.

00;09;24;00 - 00;09;50;24
Justice Cadish
So similarly, in Nevada, we learned of course, quickly to do things remotely and to have hearings remotely. But at the same time, I think what it showed us is which kinds of hearings or proceedings that works well for and which ones it really doesn't. I mean, you do it when you have to do it, but certainly our arguments before the Supreme Court are much better, I think, for everybody when they're in person.

00;09;50;24 - 00;10;24;08
Justice Cadish
We had remote arguments when we needed to, but it's not ideal. Similarly, we formed a commission that just finished its work a couple of months ago to do a study on virtual appearances for various kinds of proceedings in criminal, civil and family matters. And we've set up a series of presumptions for different kinds of proceedings. Is this kind of hearing presumed that it's going to be a remote hearing going forward, or is it the kind of hearing that is going to be presumed to be in-person, something like evidentiary hearings?

00;10;24;08 - 00;10;44;03
Justice Cadish
Or if you have in a felony criminal case, you have someone coming in under a guilty plea. You really want to be looking that person in the eye when you do that. And certainly trials and evidentiary hearing is you want someone to be in person if you can make it happen. There were some exceptions also. And again, it's just presumptive categories.

00;10;44;03 - 00;11;02;17
Justice Cadish
So if there's a good reason to flip the script, to say something that's presumptively in person should be remote for a particular reason, that's fine. But we ended up we had a lot of participation around the state, and we just adopted in the last month or so these presumptive rules. And now we'll see how that looks going forward.

00;11;02;17 - 00;11;10;05
Justice Cadish
We have set it up to look at it again within a couple of years and see how is it going. And do we need to make changes now that we're trying at this.

00;11;10;07 - 00;11;28;29
Justice Campbell
Justice Timmer, I believe you mentioned in your comments earlier that funding does not always comport with what the public wants to see in terms of technology. Are there other challenges to that you have experienced in deciding how to move forward with technology in your state, in.

00;11;29;00 - 00;11;29;28
Justice Timmer
Funding or and.

00;11;30;04 - 00;11;35;16
Justice Campbell
Any other? Yeah, funding, if you'd like to elaborate on the funding issue and then any other challenges?

00;11;35;16 - 00;11;55;16
Justice Timmer
Oh, sure. Well funding is is a challenge because for for whatever reason years ago, are all of our technology in the court system is tied to people having fines and fees, and people get pulled over as much, or they're more law abiding because in our state at least, and probably other. So those kinds of fees up just fines have plummeted.

00;11;55;21 - 00;12;13;24
Justice Timmer
But that's our source for for technology. And at the same time, of course, demands for technology expansion that has has have increased. So one of our goals is we need the legislature to put us on some kind of general fund funding, which is bad time right now to ask for that. And it probably won't happen in the next year or two.

00;12;14;01 - 00;12;42;29
Justice Timmer
But that continues to be a source, along with the fact that our funding in our county courts doesn't come entirely from the state, comes from the county. So you have different counties with different resources and different boards of supervisors. And we've been speaking with some of them in the rural communities this past week, actually, at some of the border communities, on trying to impress upon the Board of Supervisors the importance of technology for their citizens, or we're going to be rapidly left behind with where the where the court system is going.

00;12;42;29 - 00;13;18;12
Justice Timmer
And that's not not fair to them. So that seems to be our major impediment with that. That and getting everybody on the same system. We're not unified. We're not like Utah. Utah is a great state. Everything on one's case management system, ours did not develop that way. And so now we have all of these disparate parts. And so we're working a lot on through the National Center for State Courts with the nods with the the data elements having standardization so that when things are put into place for all of the different case management systems, they can talk to each other. We know what we're.

00;13;18;14 - 00;13;28;08
Justice Timmer
We're using the same terminology. And that's been an incredibly tough lift. Reaching that. So that's probably our other big, big problem are just disparate parts.

00;13;28;08 - 00;13;55;01
Justice Clement
The funding issue is different depending on what state you're in. And when you said and how difficult that is. And I'm thinking of we're not a unified system either, but we recently got $150 million to create a statewide case management system, which was incredible that we were able to secure that from from the legislature and the governor and had their full support because we recognize and I think everyone does that without that data, the policymaking behind it and the decisions.

00;13;55;01 - 00;14;14;29
Justice Clement
So not only that we may get the court, but that the other branches of government make they need that data. They need it to be apples to apples comparisons. And so that's one of the huge projects that we're focused on. And we're very lucky that we have that financial support, because without it, you just you just keep winning hand with with the system that you have and, and trying to cobble things together.

00;14;15;01 - 00;14;36;05
Justice Russell
We're lucky to have a court automation fee. So it's a $7 fee, court cost on every case it's filed that goes to our automation fund, which is really good. And it help fund initially our our automated statewide court case management system like the case net program that I talked about earlier. But then we also need general revenue.

00;14;36;05 - 00;14;55;24
Justice Russell
And then we try for grants. But the other resource that's challenging for us is personnel. IT people are in high demand. Government probably doesn't pay as much as the private sector. So like a lot of fields and we're always looking and needing more, or capable, competent people to help us there it field.

00;14;55;28 - 00;14;57;18
Justice Clement
You know we able to retain them there.

00;14;57;20 - 00;15;28;12
Justice Cadish
Yeah. We've had also in Nevada quite a bit of turnover and i.t people. I think we've got a good group now, and I'm hoping we'll be able to hold on to them. And we were able to in the 2023 legislative session, get raises for our employees. So that's a good thing that hopefully will help us because we were was an people like crazy, you know, which you understand I think people need to feed their families and hopefully with holding down one job is enough to do that. But but it's tough, right?

00;15;28;16 - 00;15;49;19
Justice Campbell
We have you know, we in Tennessee are are struggling with many of the same challenges. And in particular the, the challenges that come from having a non unified system. I know we've heard already from both, Arizona and and Michigan, you all are faced similar challenges and not having a unified system with funding coming from various places.

00;15;49;19 - 00;15;54;17
Justice Campbell
So are you in in Missouri and Nevada? Do you have a more unified system?

00;15;54;17 - 00;15;55;22
Justice Russell
Yes, we are unified.

00;15;55;22 - 00;15;56;19
Justice Campbell
Are completely unified.

00;15;56;19 - 00;16;00;04
Justice Russell
Yes. And have been since about 2011. E-Filing started back.

00;16;00;04 - 00;16;24;09
Justice Cadish
Then in Nevada. We are not a unified system. So we have some of the same challenges you've been talking about, although we're hoping that now, as getting the e-filing resource available and adopting rules making e-filing mandatory, we'll get the other courts that haven't moved that way to do so. And we're also working on the data gathering project, similar to what Arizona is working on.

00;16;24;12 - 00;16;45;29
Justice Clement
Yes. It's interesting that improvements and technology can take a non unified system and get it closer to what a unified system looks like just with technology. So well, in Michigan, we'll never have a unified system. But I think with all of the changes that we're making with technology, we're going to get very close to looking like a unified system, right?

00;16;45;29 - 00;16;53;05
Justice Campbell
Unification and at least certain respects, unification of data. The data collection and data reporting that we.

00;16;53;06 - 00;17;18;26
Justice Cadish
Saw to where an attorney who is, you know, attorneys may practice in multiple counties where county is a separate district court system. And so, at least we hope to be where the state attorney is sitting in Reno. They can file in the Reno, the Washoe County District Court, but they could also file in Lyon County or Carson City or Storey County, which are all within an hour's drive, of Reno.

00;17;18;26 - 00;17;53;13
Justice Cadish
And because if everyone is a separate system, it's just unnecessarily complicated and difficult and requires additional resources. And it can be confusing. And that's with attorneys, and that's before we even talk about people who are unrepresented trying to navigate what court they even go to. And one thing we've also worked on through our access to Justice Commission, and we got a grant to put these kiosks in public libraries around the state, that have information and self-help forms for filing.

00;17;53;13 - 00;18;11;24
Justice Cadish
And part of what is built into that is you put in where you live to try to place, direct you to the right court system. And then if it's like a small claims type matter or a landlord tenant matter, then it's not even in the district court. So you're figure out which justice court within the county that you're going to be in.

00;18;11;24 - 00;18;18;26
Justice Cadish
But hopefully through the directed questioning, we're getting people to at least the right forms with the right apps. And it's not as.

00;18;18;26 - 00;18;41;02
Justice Campbell
Well as your answer. Just I think, alluded to, you know, there are a whole lot of groups that you really have to bring along when you adopt any sort of technological innovation. And depending on the innovation, there are different groups that may be involved that you found any successful ways of doing that that might be helpful to pass along to our listeners?

00;18;41;02 - 00;18;46;05
Justice Campbell
Or are there challenges that have been roadblocks that you might not have been able to overcome yet?

00;18;46;06 - 00;19;19;13
Justice Timmer
Well, we in Arizona, we have a commission on technology, which I happen to share at the moment and and have for the last five years. And that simply oversees all technology, even though it's not a unified system. So there are certain data standards that we adopt and that all the courts have to abide by. And if they want to vary anything, if it's like the city of Phoenix are currently doing a new case management system and and so they have to get permission from us and sign off on it to make sure that it's something that we want to permit and we don't want too many disparate systems.

00;19;19;13 - 00;19;45;03
Justice Timmer
So for them, we'll probably approve it. But just say you have A81 large limited jurisdiction case management system in the state can have a small jurisdiction case management system. And that's it. Those are the two buckets. So things like that that we're trying to do, as you said in Michigan to I don't know, we've got a disparate system, but but we're going to try to bring it up to certain standards so that we can implement new things, across the board so that that's at least to. How we've approached it.

00;19;45;04 - 00;20;10;15
Justice Clement
I think changes is difficult, especially in an industry like the judiciary and the law. And you've got lawyers, and we've had a lot of judges that are kind of set in their way of how they like to run their courtroom and looking in books and writing everything. And, you know, so I think the important thing is to recognize that when you're making changes, especially with technology, that you're going to have different levels of comfort across the board.

00;20;10;17 - 00;20;32;00
Justice Clement
And I think education is the key. You know, explaining why that we're not adopting new technology just for the sake of adopting new technology, but what the goal is, and that it's to serve the public better and that that is our job. On whether you're a judge or whether you are an attorney working in the judiciary and working the system, that that our goal is to serve the public.

00;20;32;02 - 00;20;48;26
Justice Clement
And kind of keep that at the forefront of of why we're making, changes with the technology. And then, like I said, a lot of education. I think the more education that you can, you can give someone, even if it's if it's repetitive. I think that helps get people more comfortable with that change.

00;20;48;28 - 00;21;09;08
Justice Russell
I think you've hit on an interesting issue, and there's interfacing with other of our judicial partners. We struggled for a while, but now we do exchange data with both state and federal departments. Like for example, one of our most recent projects was implementing, traffic warrants so that we have real time sharing to warrant information and more recourse.

00;21;09;08 - 00;21;20;27
Justice Russell
So that's been another big hurdle to get over. But allowing those other judicial partners that work with this to be able to have access ID and access out an exchange of data and information is is real key.

00;21;20;27 - 00;21;52;29
Justice Cadish
I was just thinking about sort of a little bit different direction, but just that on the one hand we have some self represented litigants who have pushed us like, why aren't you allowing us to you file when you have attorneys e-filing, but at the same time we have to be cautious because then if we like, we've made it mandatory for attorneys, but we can't make it mandatory for self represented because while some of them are pushing to have the opportunity to do so, some simply won't have the resources or the availability of the technology to to do it.

00;21;52;29 - 00;22;12;11
Justice Cadish
And so we can't just put everyone in the same bucket and say, well, mandatory e-filing for all this is great because it won't be great for some, and you still need to allow there to be some exceptions to do your best to allow everyone to participate in court proceedings if they need it.

00;22;12;15 - 00;22;31;08
Justice Clement
That's a great point. Thinking back to remote hearings, we said some things make sense to do remote hearings, but there may be individuals that, for whatever reason, don't feel comfortable or don't have the resources to do it. And we need to make sure that the courts can respond to all of those situations, even when we're moving forward with the technology.

00;22;31;10 - 00;22;57;08
Justice Russell
So what we do with someone is pro se. They'll bring their their paper document in, and the clerks scanned it into our e-filing system. And so it becomes part of the electronic record. But then we also have kiosks at every courthouse that people could enter in and or utilize some of the forms that we have online. But we don't have any beer that prevents people because the pro se from being able to file.

00;22;57;11 - 00;23;25;28
Justice Russell
And I think that just as Russell brought out something really, really interesting, that I would be curious what you all think and that is working with other justice partners that like the E warrants and we have warrants and protective orders and all of those types of things, which is great. The other partners can access. But along with that is that means that other people can access it and we don't control other those other agencies as much as we would probably like to for that kind of thing.

00;23;26;01 - 00;23;53;23
Justice Russell
So you have to start worrying about, well, what's their security like on their end there? We're now opening our doors, so to speak, to them to come in, and we have some real cyber security issues there. And we try to set standards, at least in the courts with, with, okay, firewalling and whatnot. But we don't know. I mean, and our nightmare is if somebody in the Parks and Rec department all of a sudden opens a weird email and it ends up funneling through and point out that, that the judiciary.

00;23;53;28 - 00;24;01;02
Justice Russell
So I just wonder if you all experience that when you work now, increasingly, they want us to work with other partners in in government.

00;24;01;03 - 00;24;36;24
Justice Cadish
I don't necessarily have that experience, but it just reminded me about, you know, we're going to putting more and more on the cloud through obviously secure cloud, sites and our technology experts, which I'm certainly not one of them, tell us that, if we do that, those resources have staff that are whose job is to make sure it's secure, whereas if we keep it to ourselves and don't put it in the cloud, then we would have to hire more staff, more IT people to be like monitoring everything more than we already are.

00;24;36;24 - 00;24;59;21
Justice Cadish
And we know there have been several states and other government agencies that have had bad people take down their sites or demand ransom, ransomware attacks and things like that, and we always have to be concerned about those things. So, you know, we use the technology and we want to put more and more available so we can access it wherever we are.

00;24;59;21 - 00;25;16;19
Justice Cadish
We carry our laptops everywhere and to be able to and need to be able to access all of that. But we also need to be mindful of the other side of that. As what risks does that open up, and how can we best prevent improper access to our materials?

00;25;16;19 - 00;25;39;17
Justice Campbell
Well, and I think, you know, this conversation well illustrates why change is often very slow in the judiciary when it comes to technology, because there are so many countervailing interests to consider. You know, we hardly ever hear the words cutting edge used to describe technology in the judiciary. And, you know, there there could be multiple reasons for that.

00;25;39;17 - 00;25;59;02
Justice Campbell
But yeah, there is a process when you're considering adopting anything new of how it will affect other stakeholders of, you know, what security risks something might present to data. Do you have any experiences to share with that? With how? Maybe things have moved more slowly than you expected because of those sorts of issues or others for one big challenge.

00;25;59;02 - 00;26;27;05
Justice Timmer
And like, falls along the line of your question and that is redaction. So because all of our public case files are now open to the public, we have are required upon call filers, which includes the attorneys, pro se judges who file their judgments to redact confidential information. And then that has caused a buzz storm in our state because people were wanting our lawyers or wouldn't know what is confidential.

00;26;27;10 - 00;26;49;12
Justice Timmer
And we give it a definition in our rule, but it's not an exhaustive definition. It's a definition of of some examples. But, you know, people, social security numbers, bank account numbers, maybe children's names. There are a lot of different information that in one case is confidential, but maybe not in another case. So they have to file a redacted copy as well as a clean copy.

00;26;49;12 - 00;27;11;13
Justice Timmer
The redacted copy is the one that appears on our public case management system that's available to anybody in the world that has a smartphone or a connection anywhere. But it's been really tough to get this change adopted and accepted. Lawyers come into the clerk's office and ask these women and men that work in two clicks office who are not lawyers, how am I supposed to do this?

00;27;11;17 - 00;27;21;19
Justice Timmer
So it's slowly, working, but it's it's a pain. I don't know if you guys have redaction issues in your states or not, but we do.

00;27;21;21 - 00;27;53;28
Justice Cadish
Also require redactions of the personal identifying information along the lines of what you identify it. And so folks in it need to file a motion. Usually it's in their appendices and appeal it sometimes a few pages of their actual brief if it has to discuss something confidential, but they can file a motion to seal those documents. And then we have a way for them to filed under seal provisionally, until we rule on the motion to seal or to allow the filing of the redacted version publicly.

00;27;53;28 - 00;28;09;20
Justice Cadish
And then keep an unredacted version off the public access. Sometimes we don't we don't need anything but the redacted version, but sometimes we do. So I don't know. We do our best to deal with that. I'm not sure how. Anyone else deals with those issues.

00;28;09;20 - 00;28;33;22
Justice Campbell
In terms of how stakeholders have accepted change or responded to change. I mean, have you found that even groups that maybe were initially hesitant about certain technological innovations eventually came around and learned to love it? You know, I'm thinking about the electronic warrants that you mentioned, Chief Justice Russell. It was that a hit right off the bat? Did it take some time to get everyone on board?

00;28;33;22 - 00;28;56;17
Justice Russell
It was something that that our prosecutor's office and others had been requesting for a long time. So that was one change that was somewhat welcomed even from life standpoint. I started reading briefs on my iPad less because we started electronic filing. As I said, back in 2011. And I was like, no way. I wouldn't like paper briefs. I like to cuddle up with them at home and read them sitting on the couch.

00;28;56;17 - 00;29;02;01
Justice Russell
And I thought I did not want to read them on an iPad. Now, you could not take this iPad away from me.

00;29;02;04 - 00;29;07;13
Justice Campbell
Hey, we need to chat after this because I still love to cozy up. My. Hard copy briefs.

00;29;07;13 - 00;29;16;15
Justice Russell
You can cozy right up with this little iPad and it is wonderful. You don't have to carry that big stack of briefs everywhere you go. I would never go back.

00;29;16;15 - 00;29;40;24
Justice Cadish
Yeah, I still have a hard time reading briefs or or, you know, a lengthy bench memo on line. I mean, I can obviously, I know how to access that, and I do when I review some short things by email or in electronic form all the time. But the more lengthy, substantive documents, I still have a hard time doing it completely.

00;29;40;24 - 00;30;06;27
Justice Cadish
I should not, on their. Although I do like I have come around to where I'm when I'm editing other's work. I've gotten pretty good at the red lining and words. So now that's the only way. And you know, I had to run kicking and screaming from using my red pen to edit everything, but. So I suppose I can slowly learn to read it online, and it is a hassle to carry heavy person everywhere.

00;30;06;29 - 00;30;28;10
Justice Timmer
It is, we switch to e-filing at least I think we're now totally filing in the state, except for limited jurisdiction we're working on, but we switched for it back in 2008 or 2009, and I was on our intermediate court of Appeals. That and the chief judge and I got everybody their iPads and all that. Well, what happened? They immediately start running the paper route because it's difficult to change.

00;30;28;12 - 00;30;45;07
Justice Timmer
And, as a consequence, people are going through toner cartridges like crazy. Well, those things are expensive. So I literally had to start. I said, well, I'm going to start rationing you people. So everybody gets a ration. You can buy your own toner cartridges. So that was what did it, because people just didn't want change. They just want to run out.

00;30;45;09 - 00;31;08;23
Justice Timmer
But it's now, as I say, wait, some of my colleagues still use a lot of paper, but I like I'm all electronic. And now we've gone to, I think probably you all too, with collective decision making, get into a, shared document so that all the edits and the comments and everything are all in one document. And that is so nice compared to how it used to be, with lots of handwritten comments circulated.

00;31;08;24 - 00;31;28;19
Justice Cadish
I don't know, we're not there yet. We're not sharing like we we have the capability, but we're not doing it because of concern about like losing control of which is the current version of a document, the sort of master. So you don't have different people making different changes, and then you lose track of which one is the final one that we agree on.

00;31;28;19 - 00;31;30;26
Justice Cadish
So, I don't know, we can talk.

00;31;30;26 - 00;31;34;25
Justice Russell
Back to you to to Mary the Elephant. Talk to me. Yeah. How about the shared document? Okay.

00;31;35;02 - 00;31;36;28
Justice Campbell
We're all going to stick around for a few minutes.

00;31;37;00 - 00;31;37;09
Justice Clement
After.

00;31;37;09 - 00;31;38;14
Justice Campbell
This. This recording.

00;31;38;14 - 00;31;39;23
Justice Russell
Is complete.

00;31;39;26 - 00;32;07;03
Justice Campbell
So looking ahead to what kinds of innovations are coming down the pike that you may be interested in personally that your courts may be interested in? There's a lot of exciting stuff happening in the IT world, especially in the in the realm of self represented litigants. A couple of you have mentioned ways that you're using technology are ready to help for the public generally, but but specifically self represented litigants, things like kiosks in public places.

00;32;07;06 - 00;32;18;16
Justice Campbell
Are there other innovations that you've heard about that you're interested in learning more about, or just ways in which you think the court systems are going to have to respond in the years to come to keep up?

00;32;18;17 - 00;32;21;07
Justice Clement
Well, I think we have to talk about artificial intelligence.

00;32;21;09 - 00;32;21;26
Justice Campbell
Yes.

00;32;21;29 - 00;32;45;22
Justice Clement
It's on everyone's mind. We've been talking about it quite a bit the last couple days in Michigan. We've already purchased licenses for a product that is a generative AI legal assistant. And we're we're piloting that with clerks and other lawyers and in, the system and looking at the potential of using AI to write code for our case management systems.

00;32;45;25 - 00;33;07;28
Justice Clement
So we're, we're making those stats probably not as quickly as generative AI is changing. But we're and, you know, I feel like we're as close to cutting edge as we can be. Pretty cutting edge. Yeah. And we've asked Michigan Legal Help, which is our, our, national leader, legal help, self-help platform to use AI to support access to justice for privacy litigants.

00;33;07;28 - 00;33;19;09
Justice Clement
So we're we're in this and we're embracing it. I think we recognize that it's going to keep moving and we can't stop it. So let's see how we can how we can utilize it to help serve the public.

00;33;19;11 - 00;33;42;02
Justice Timmer
I'd seen I think we're doing the same. Same, at least not maybe not as far as Michigan has gone already. But wanting to proceed down that path with what I can do for self represented litigants. And frankly, I take the place with court employees that we can't keep. So trying to think figure, well, what can we use human beings for certain things, but then they can use it as their partners to, to substitute for the people that we just can't get.

00;33;42;04 - 00;33;59;29
Justice Timmer
But I have seen such moot so many cool things that, you know, if only we had the money would be great. But I've seen in LA County, for example, they or they have an integrated systems for their counties for all their courts, and they have a, you know, gazillion of them. And they have something they have $1 billion budget just for one, you know, one county court system.

00;34;00;03 - 00;34;18;16
Justice Timmer
Crazy. And so they have something called Cima online. And I've seen it demonstrated where it's just this woman named Gina, and she speaks like ten different languages. And if you say, well, what can I do for you? I ticket, well, where did you get the ticket? And then it goes right into you personally and will walk you through saying hello.

00;34;18;16 - 00;34;39;12
Justice Timmer
And I see you've got a ticket for speeding and you qualify for defensive driving. And would you like to do this or would you like to do that? And in all these languages. Well, they've gone from 4000 people a week that have coming through their system and you see pictures lined up to like, you know, on there because it is just taking care of is so, so quickly and easily for them. So that's the dream system.

00;34;39;14 - 00;34;45;18
Justice Campbell
I would like to see Gina adopted in a lot of other settings, but.

00;34;45;21 - 00;35;14;28
Justice Cadish
Yeah, I don't know. We've got, you know, in the kiosks that I mentioned earlier. It's funny because I hadn't thought about it as I until we were in these sessions this week where I'm like, oh, I guess we are using ignite because when you're asking questions to direct you to the right kinds of forms and to fill in the forms based on how people answer the questions and, yes, have availability in multiple languages, and then it translates it to English to file into the court.

00;35;14;28 - 00;35;39;20
Justice Cadish
I mean, that's that's a cool thing that we're doing now. But, yeah, I think I'm interested in what just as Timur was just talking about, our courts in Las Vegas, the, the limited jurisdiction courts that deal with landlord tenant issues have had an overwhelming number of eviction cases since the prohibition on any evictions ended post Covid.

00;35;39;23 - 00;35;59;03
Justice Cadish
You know, they they couldn't evict during that time period. It which made a huge backlog. And then, trying to deal with those issues is a real challenge. And we're trying to use eviction diversion programs and other things to try to help. But many of those folks just aren't going to be able to keep paying the rent, and the rents keep going up.

00;35;59;03 - 00;36;06;12
Justice Cadish
And of course, then we have challenges with affordable housing, but that probably goes far afield from talking about court technology today.

00;36;06;12 - 00;36;26;01
Justice Russell
Yes, I is is just the biggest thing that's it's going to happen to our world, including our courts. And there was a quote given to us yesterday at one of our solutions that there's going to be more changes in the next 20 years than we have seen in the last two centuries. So that's like frightening. Hold on to your seats.

00;36;26;01 - 00;36;50;05
Justice Russell
And I is getting better. Better. And where wouldn't it be? Figuring out the best ways it could help us in the courts to help our litigants and try to steer away from the areas that it's not helpful, that it's, in fact a role? I had been playing with AI for a little over maybe about a year and a half, and I always enter a query of please write a 500 word essay, and I give my name and the court that I on it.

00;36;50;06 - 00;37;17;06
Justice Russell
It spits out real quick. This essay looks like nine errors, and each one they went to the wrong law school. It was like. So my parents were both lawyers that I was a judge and so-and-so caught in there. And I think, well, this information is available everywhere, all kinds of websites. Why can they capture that, really? But then last week, I need to write a letter recommendation for someone, and I gave it the name of the award, the qualifications of this person.

00;37;17;09 - 00;37;29;28
Justice Russell
And it produced a beautiful product that I used in 90% of. I made a couple of changes to be more specific in a few areas. Other than that, it was still helpful and saved me a lot of time.

00;37;30;00 - 00;37;51;03
Justice Cadish
One thing that I worry about with AI, there was some discussion we've had about whether it has built in prejudices, if you will, which of course I'm concerned about. But even beyond that, and maybe just because of how much of a stickler I am in writing, I'm worried about freezing the kind of writing that is done in place.

00;37;51;03 - 00;38;29;05
Justice Cadish
So when you ask a generative AI program to write something, all its doing is copying the exact way things that are publicly available have been written, depending on the style you tell it to use. But that means that what it produces is in the style that's been used before. And I think that unless we continue to edit and make it our own, it sort of freezes creativity and like keeps things to be written in the same way they've always been written and or in the legal field or our field as judges to make decisions the way decisions have been made before, that it's copying from.

00;38;29;05 - 00;38;44;03
Justice Cadish
And obviously it's up to us to actually be the decision makers and not rely on AI. But I don't know, I, I worry about sort of freezing creativity if people use it too much. And the field.

00;38;44;06 - 00;39;04;12
Justice Campbell
What was interesting at one of our, conference sessions yesterday, one of the panelists mentioned that he allowed his students to use AI for to, to write their exam papers and it brought the low quality papers up quite a bit, but it didn't really improve the quality of the top.

00;39;04;12 - 00;39;05;00
Justice Timmer
Right.

00;39;05;02 - 00;39;10;06
Justice Campbell
Students papers. And that may be indicative of what you were just saying, right?

00;39;10;06 - 00;39;14;21
Justice Cadish
If it's all just going to be the vast middle and south.

00;39;14;24 - 00;39;38;05
Justice Campbell
And I guess that's the challenge we have is figuring out, you know, how do we use AI in a way that really accelerates and improves the quality of our justice systems? And, you know, I do think there's a lot of opportunity there, as you've highlighted, Justice Russell and others. And so I look forward to seeing what all of your court systems will do now, especially be keeping my eye on Michigan.

00;39;38;08 - 00;39;57;09
Justice Campbell
It's exciting to hear about what you have planned. I want to return, just for a moment to funding. Sounds like we all have very different funding mechanisms. Some of us have legislative funding, significant legislative funding, others are relying on court fees. Justice Chief Justice Russell, I think you mentioned user fees that have been a source of funding in your states.

00;39;57;12 - 00;40;25;10
Justice Campbell
So I think we all have to be pretty creative to figure out how to fund this. And that has come up a couple of times that using technology effectively and the judiciary benefits a lot of different stakeholders. It's not just about improving things for judges or, you know, improving things for litigants. It's about making data more readily available on higher quality data, you know, more readily available to policymakers, partnering with other entities that need access to this data.

00;40;25;10 - 00;40;35;11
Justice Campbell
What are some ways that you have learned to be creative with respect to funding technological innovations? There are some grants out there that write Justice Russell.

00;40;35;11 - 00;40;45;29
Justice Timmer
Yes, we have. They said earlier between grants and general revenue from the legislature in our $7 filing fee, in every case, that's been pretty much all we've utilized as far as I know.

00;40;45;29 - 00;40;53;19
Justice Russell
We both for I don't know if this was us in the category, but there are a lot of court fees and fines and restitution that's just out there, right?

00;40;53;19 - 00;41;14;11
Justice Timmer
I mean, not collected. And we don't have the resources to go out there and collect it. So what we've done is use technology for it. We've gotten outside the vendor and they get a, you know, a slice of the pie side of that funds it. And so it's called our fair program. And they do. They've been tremendously successful at collected millions of dollars now for these fines and restitution.

00;41;14;11 - 00;41;30;11
Justice Timmer
I mean people they also have something called pay near me, which just worked out really well so that people can go to a 7-Eleven or circle K or Walmart or you name it, and they can just pay, right, their their court fines and it will within 30 minutes registered. It's paid. And so we don't have to chase them down.

00;41;30;11 - 00;41;38;21
Justice Timmer
And the vendor the private vendor handles that. And so that's the way we I suppose we fund it that way by letting them have a slice of that.

00;41;38;27 - 00;42;11;28
Justice Cadish
Until this past year, Nevada courts, we were funded in a significant part by administrative assessment fees and cases. But thankfully, we were able to persuade the legislature to get us off of that and to be entirely, and general fund moneys. There are still administrative assessment fees, but it's not our job to collect them necessarily, and we're not funded with them, you know, and there's been social justice type concerns about funding in courts with fees and fines, and we're mindful of that as well.

00;42;11;28 - 00;42;19;12
Justice Cadish
And in the appearance of supporting your courts on the backs of the folks who find themselves in the systems.

00;42;19;13 - 00;42;22;25
Justice Timmer
If we need all of you to come to Arizona and speed up, we've got to.

00;42;22;25 - 00;42;23;26
Justice Clement
Make.

00;42;23;28 - 00;42;37;15
Justice Timmer
That or get the the Michigan or Nevada legislators to come down and talk to our legislators about the benefits of of that kind of funding, because like, I agree with you entirely. You shouldn't build us on the backs of people. So people's ills and woe is.

00;42;37;18 - 00;43;06;16
Justice Clement
I want to clarify that when I talk about the funding that that we get, it's for our state court administrative office and what we do at the at the state level and it's services that we provide to the trial courts. But we are a non unified system. So we have a very large trial funding issue in Michigan right now that we are that we are engaged and trying to resolve, because that that's the problem that we have is that it's fines and fees, you know, from, from the public that are, that are funding it at the local level.

00;43;06;16 - 00;43;19;03
Justice Clement
So the success that we've had with the legislature and the support that we've had from the governor are on these more innovative things that we're that we're trying to do to help on the child courts in our are not going to fight system.

00;43;19;06 - 00;43;44;03
Justice Campbell
Switching gears, just a bet. It's come up a couple of times that making what courts do more visible is, is a good thing for society. You know, it allows people to have access to information they may need. What role do you think technology plays in civic education in our country? And I guess we're all hopeful that some students out there are tuning in to these live streams of of arguments and whatnot.

00;43;44;05 - 00;43;50;28
Justice Campbell
Have you seen any evidence that improving technology is allowing allowing people to understand what we do?

00;43;50;29 - 00;44;12;11
Justice Russell
Well, I should a higher level make it available. It increases our transparency. You know, if people want to utilize it, then you can take the horse to water, but you can't make them drink. But if you have your court proceedings available, you know, I want a platform where people go, whether it's, you know, an Instagram account or a YouTube account or whatever.

00;44;12;14 - 00;44;33;21
Justice Russell
When we explain court systems to people, they don't have to physically come to our building. They can press a button and lie in bed at night and watch a court oral argument from, like the state Supreme Court from the day before, earlier that day. And I think just making it as easy as possible for people to have access to the courts to see what we do really does help.

00;44;33;21 - 00;44;47;02
Justice Russell
Then show them and provide them the knowledge of what we do and in access to our opinions, you know, access to other aspects of of our work, I think, definitely helps civic education. Yeah.

00;44;47;06 - 00;45;18;17
Justice Cadish
I think that the court TV drama type shows either fictionalized drama or the so-called real judges, like a Judge Judy type show, and I'm not attacking her personally, but, but in those settings, it shows judges being extremely opinionated and scowling at the litigants and, you know, reprimanding people all the time and making jokes at their expense and those things.

00;45;18;17 - 00;45;54;18
Justice Cadish
And that's like the opposite of the way a judge should act as a real judge on the bench. And so making available the videos of real court proceedings, I think, can help counterbalance that. Of course, it's not quite as interesting and dramatic, but when it's a real courtroom as opposed to those dramatized versions. But I think it's important to let people see the way real judges act, the way real courtrooms operate as part of their education, and to understand the court system and to gain more respect for how things actually work.

00;45;54;25 - 00;46;18;03
Justice Cadish
Folks that come down to jury duty are always, you know, not wanting to be there, most of them. But after they if they do participate on the jury and sit through a trial at the end, though pretty much uniformly say it was a really good experience. I learned a lot. And this is sort of without having to be on jury duty, you can see what real court proceedings look like and learn from it and hopefully gain respect for it.

00;46;18;07 - 00;46;36;04
Justice Timmer
I think I've always been interested too, and how that might think about a technology and the fact that our opinions are out there pretty quickly. And same with the trial trial judges rulings, how it's impacted the judges writing those decisions. We know they're going to be read by a greater audience and the people that are just involved in the cases.

00;46;36;04 - 00;46;58;13
Justice Timmer
And so I wonder if many of us now write differently. We're really are trying to say something in the first paragraph kind of sums it up in a way that anybody I always think of anybody that with a high school degree should be able to read and understand, no matter how complicated the cases. And I've noticed I've been a appellate judge now for 24 years, and I've noticed the trial judge rulings have changed quite a bit.

00;46;58;13 - 00;47;24;13
Justice Timmer
Instead of motion denied. Yeah, there's a lot more explanation as to well, this is why this is how I see it and explaining it and those things come out, you know, immediately. So they're digested by a greater number of people. And I think that people is about transparency. People are understanding more of what of what courts do and don't do in terms of making policy. Don't do that kind of thing. So that's been a positive.

00;47;24;16 - 00;47;37;19
Justice Campbell
Well, any closing thoughts? We have covered a lot of ground, but I would love to just give you an opportunity if you have any hopes about technology or any any closing remarks to add, I pray I would just.

00;47;37;19 - 00;47;58;26
Justice Clement
Say that it's it's great to talk to colleagues in other states and hear what what they are doing. I wrote down a number of things, that I'm taking back to Michigan for, for us to look at and say how, you know, how we can how can we make these improvements to serve the public better? So I just really appreciate having the opportunity to talk with you all and hear what you're all doing.

00;47;58;26 - 00;48;10;20
Justice Clement
And even though we may have different challenges in Michigan, you know, just have that conversation about making improvements, you know, gets gets people thinking about what what you can do. So thank you.

00;48;10;22 - 00;48;29;06
Justice Timmer
I echo that it's it's a delight to hear what you all are doing and that I can go back and say, well, this is what they're doing in this state. And how come we're not doing this? And so there's no need to reinvent the wheel when we have 50 different 50 plus jurisdictions that are doing the same things and with the same goal to serve the public.

00;48;29;13 - 00;48;35;04
Justice Timmer
So, I too appreciate it. Appreciate that you've invited us here to talk about it today.

00;48;35;07 - 00;49;06;09
Justice Cadish
I suppose, like many people, I have a hard time adjusting to change, and maybe I do use new technological resources and will learn them, but sometimes something new will come along and I'll think, like many like, oh, it's working fine the way it is. But eventually I go along and realize it is a good thing. And and I think as leaders of our judicial systems, we need to push ourselves to be thinking about how this makes it better for the judicial system.

00;49;06;09 - 00;49;27;13
Justice Cadish
And the state as a whole, and the people that we serve as public servants, that it's not just about us. So we need to have that mindset. And I'm glad to be with a group of people who who feel that same way, and to help push me about what may be better for the way we conduct our business going forward.

00;49;27;13 - 00;49;29;10
Justice Cadish
So I appreciate the opportunity.

00;49;29;13 - 00;49;50;25
Justice Russell
Thank you for having us here today. And change is hard. But stagnation is fatal. The public expects us out of this. They you can get your bank account information online right now. You can get your medical records. Why can't you get access to the courts as well? In other we are courts and government in our slower than all the other entities I mentioned.

00;49;50;27 - 00;50;02;26
Justice Russell
It's our duty as leaders to to explore these, these uses of technology to the betterment of the people that use our courts. And, I'm excited. Yeah.

00;50;02;29 - 00;50;18;04
Justice Campbell
Well, thanks to each of you for your leadership in this area. For I'm working so hard on these issues in your own states and for sharing your expertise on them both here at the conference and with all of us and and our listeners. So thank you for being here today.