Court Motions Go Digital
A new system has been deployed at Clark County Courthouse in Las Vegas, Nev., to ensure that legal documents get sent to the appropriate district attorney in time. In the past, the documents would frequently get lost or misplaced.
Lilly Burns, a legal secretary in the Specialty Unit for Vehicular Crimes, said she and other secretaries were also uninformed about numerous motions.
The new system was designed by IT manager John Beaird and his unit, and saves a projected $1 million annually in staff time.
Beaird used a Hewlett-Packard 9100C scanner to scan documents and send digital images of them to attorneys via email.
He relies on the 9100C’s “scan-to-share” feature, which has two prominent tools: The first allows a description of the document to be incorporated into the header.
The second tool lets the scanned document be sent in PDF form, allowing large files to be stored within the network and not clog the email server, according to Beaird.
The approach has decreased the court’s reliance on couriers, clerks do not have to sift through numerous papers, and prison guards accompany inmates to court less frequently.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from Computerworld (07/28/03); Consilvio, Jean.
