Legal Technology

Computer system aims to streamline jury process

The Broward County, Fla., Clerk of Courts launched its new computer-based jury management system. The Jury+ software system aims to eliminate much of the paper in the jury selection and management process.

With Jury+, people who receive jury summonses can respond online instead of calling or responding by mail. During jury selection, the system will randomly draw names for each trial’s jury panel and track their comings and goings.

The software can also review state lists of licensed drivers and voter registrations, purge duplicate names and produce lists of prospective jurors. It will expedite juror payments by directly connecting to the clerks’ payment system.

All this did not happen overnight. The system was ready to launch more than three years after the contract was signed with Encino, Calif.-based Jury Systems in June 2006. The Florida Supreme Court approved use of the system last September.

Trial technology saves last man standing

In October 2006, Gary Swanson, an executive with Hynix Semiconductor, was charged with joining a criminal conspiracy to fix prices in the dynamic random access memory industry. The right trial technology made Gary Swanson, the last man standing in this litigation, a free man.

More and more courts ...

are using technology and electronic records management to open the courts up to the people and support pro se litigants. Once these inititatives meet e-filing projects, courts may be getting close to Tocqueville's Democracy in America (vol. 1, vol. 2)

Tech Trials

We all get frustrated with new technology. We also get frustrated with old technology such as tape. But when you get right down to it, whether old or new, if the input is bad the output will be bad. And in the "live-court-reporter vs. tape" debate, the "garbage in" argument lends itself well to Jerome L. Rose letter to the editor of the New Jersey Law Journal, where he states that there's nothing like a real live court reporter.