information technology – The Interdependent Third Branch

Alaska courts hit by cyberattack

Alaska’s court system was hit by a malware attack this week. The problem was caught quickly, which prevented significant damage. Nevertheless, certain public features on the court system’s website–including the ability to search court cases and view Zoom hearings–were temporarily taken offline.

The situation is reminiscent of the Solar Winds cyberattack that hit the federal courts earlier thisyear, as well as the ransomware attack that affected the Texas court system last May.

The lesson: whether you wear a robe, a suit, or elastic pants to work, give thanks to your IT Department today.

Arizona courts adopt new platform for handling digital evidence

The Arizona court system is adopting a modern digital platform to help streamline virtual hearings, according to this story in Government Technology. The platform will include a digital evidence center capable of holding all relevant digital evidence — from police body cam footage to data collected from smartphones — in a single place. The platform will also allow digital evidence to be collected, digitized, and shared remotely.

JOTWELL review of Reichman et al. on technology and the regulation of judges

I am delighted to have a new essay up on JOTWELL, reviewing Amnon Reichman, Yair Sagy, and Shlomi Balaban’s recent article, From a Panacea to a Panopticon: The Use and Misuse of Technology in the Regulation of Judges. It’s a terrific look at the Israeli’s courts’ development of case management technology, and the impact of that technology on its judges, all told through a subtle organizational lens. A snippet from the start of the review:

Court systems are large, complex, diverse, and resource-dependent organizations, a condition that shapes their character and behavior. It is surprising, then, how often court leaders fail to account for the organizational perspective in their decisionmaking. Amnon Reichman, Yair Sagy, and Shlomi Balaban illustrate this phenomenon, showing how the visionaries behind Legal-Net, Israel’s cloud-based judicial management system, were plagued by their failure to place its development in a broader organizational context.

Reichman and his colleagues trace the Israeli courts’ development of Legal-Net over two decades. Their research reveals a court system brimming with confidence that technology could be used to regulate judicial behavior, but insufficiently appreciative of the challenges of technological integration. The first version of Legal-Net was a flop: complicated and ambitious, it was a poor fit with existing court culture. A subsequent version better accounted for the court system’s unique character, but court leaders failed to anticipate how significantly its implementation would affect that character. In fact, the authors explain, the introduction of Legal-Net “heralded a tectonic shift in the judiciary’s work culture and work patterns,” as judges tailored their behavior toward the system’s incentives and away from their traditional roles. Today, it seems, the Israeli courts work for Legal-Net as much as Legal-Net works for them.

Please read the whole thing!

Texas court system suffers ransomware attack

Last week, the Texas appeals courts and judicial agencies suffered a ransomware attack that disabled their IT network for several days. The situation was caught quickly and state court administrators created a temporary website. Officials have stressed that no personal information was stolen, and that the attack had no effect on the courts’ use of online hearings in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Georgia’s state courts experienced a similar ransomware attack last July.

Although no harm seems to have come out of this latest incident, it does underscore the vulnerability of technological networks and the potential effect on the administration of justice.

Several East African courts will digitize services, with help from Microsoft

From the story:

Microsoft and Strathmore University School of Law have devised a partnership that will see key strides made in the manner East Africa’s judicial systems operate. Named the ‘Policy Innovation Series’, the program targets to digitize the region’s judicial processes, systems, and their overall functions. The policy and discussion are in line with previously set goals that purpose to digitize local systems – an activity that has been tasked to government agencies, the justice system, and the private sector.

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The partnership will digitize case management systems, e-filing processes, document management systems and courtroom applications such as audiovisual and transcriptions processes.

The current system involves so much paperwork and manual processing, that merely filing a lawsuit can take three months. Hopefully this program will vastly improve the efficient administration of justice.

Courts are big organizations…

…and they require a lot more manpower than what the public might see at first glance. Courts need judges, clerks, and staff attorneys, to be sure — but they also need custodians, security officers, chefs, IT professionals, accountants, operations administrators, and every other type of job that allows large organizations to operate smoothly.

That point was recently driven home by this quirky job posting on the website for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado:

Apply for the full-time position of Database Specialist or Programmer for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado, and join us as a respected and valued cog of the massive federal bureaucracy.

We work eight-hour days, rarely ever work after hours, and are not on call. Best of all, we have a benefits package that even the largest corporate conglomerate can’t (read won’t) offer, including a healthcare plan shared by members of the Supreme Court, all Federal Holidays off, amazing amounts of paid leave and separate sick leave, inclusion in one of the best rated, lowest cost retirement funds, and wait for it . . . a generous, guaranteed annuity (pension) backed by the Federal Government! You can work and have a life.

This job description is not exactly imbued with the deep solemnity that John Roberts tries to cultivate in all aspects of the federal courts’ public persona. But perhaps that is the point. It’s a job posting for a database specialist, not a judge, and is (evidently) written to attract the best candidates for that specific position. Some database specialists may dream of working specifically in the court system. But I suspect that most don’t care too much about the organization’s day-to-day work, as long as the job is interesting, pays well, and has good benefits.

Bravo to the supervisors who allowed this posting to go up, and for giving us glimpse into the real people who make the courts run.