MONTPELIER -- Associate Supreme Court Justice John Dooley pointed to a brown accordion file folder bulging with multi-page briefs and motions and other documents necessary for a typical court case.
More than 50,000 case files are created every year in Vermont courts, he said.
"Technology offers us the opportunity to throw this away," Dooley said, pushing the brown folder toward the audience of lawmakers attending a briefing last week on proposals to restructure the judicial branch of government.
Although the Legislature will have to approve the consolidation and reorganization plans developed by the Commission on Judicial Operation, the judiciary's technology transformation doesn't have to wait -- and isn't.
By next month, the first tests of a consumer-friendly electronic filing system will begin, said Amy Davenport, administrative judge for trial courts.
Seeking a divorce? Imagine sitting down at a computer and accessing a secure, self-serve program that poses a series of easy-to-understand questions, free of legal jargon. The answers end up in the appropriate boxes on the official divorce form.
By summer, two courts are expected to begin offering electronic filing to lawyers and the public, with the system rolling out to all district and family courts by fall, Dooley said.
During the next three years, courts also plan to transition to a state-of-the-art case-management system that would make possible the switch to paperless records. The case-management system "is the backbone for everything," Dooley said. It would take electronic filings from lawyers and individuals handling their own cases and put them into virtual accordion files; allow remote access to these case files by judges, clerks, lawyers and clients; organize the documents within case files; keep track of the individual case schedules; maintain records of the documents supplied and those that are due; and send notices to parties in cases.
"Now a clerk has to fat-finger all of the information into the case-management system," which Davenport described as antiquated.
Dooley and Davenport both said the coordinated electronic filing and record-management systems will make it easier for the public to interact with courts while improving administrative efficiency and saving money.
"The hope is the system will be used by all the courts," Davenport said.
That's not assured unless the Legislature agrees with the consolidation recommendations of the Commission on Judicial Operation. Vermont's current court system is a hybrid of state and county courts.
"It won't be as effective if we don't have the restructuring," Davenport said.
An organization whose mission is to advise low-income Vermonters about how handle some legal problems on their own has partnered with the state's judicial system to develop the consumer-friendly side of the electronic filing system.
Tom Garrett, executive director of Legal Services Law Line of Vermont Inc., said his organization has a grant to pay for the writing of scripts that will guide consumers through the questions they must answer to complete various forms filed in Vermont's family courts.
"We are taking the family court forms and making them interactive forms," Garrett said. The scripts also will offer explanations of legal terms and procedures. Probate court, where there are lots of forms and where Vermonters frequently handle their own filings, would be another good candidate for self-help scripts, Garrett said.
"This is going to simplify the process" for those unfamiliar with court procedures, Garrett said.
The judiciary's electronic filing system will offer direct filing options to lawyers and those who want to fill in electronic forms without going through scripts.
State government, including the judicial branch, has been forced to cut spending during the past two years as tax revenues shrunk in response to the recession. However, the judiciary has been able to proceed with its technology transformation project thanks to a special fund set up by the Legislature and some federal budget earmarks and grants, said Robert Greemore, court administrator.
The court's special technology fund gets its dollars from a $12.50 assessment on each traffic ticket, which raises about $850,000 a year. Another $650,000 a year goes to the fund from $20 and $30 fees assessed on those who fail to respond on time to traffic tickets or ignore the judgment in their cases.
The fund wasn't going to generate enough money to allow the judiciary to move ahead with the project now, Dooley said. So court officials worked with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to secure two budget earmarks that together total $750,000. "We are asking for one more, $250,000," Greemore said.
The state also was awarded some other smaller grants it could put toward the technology project, he said.
On Dec. 31, Greemore said, he signed a $4.5 million, three-year contract for the case-management system with New Dawn Technologies of Utah.
Now that the work is under way, "I'm unbelievably excited," Greemore said. "This just has unbelievable potential to have our business much more convenient to users." If electronic filing and case management replaced paper across the state's entire array of courts -- as envisioned by the Commission on Judicial Operation -- Dooley said, "We will be the leader in the country."