The Cutting Edge: Computing / Technology / Innovation : CASE STUDY: How technology changed a business : Making a Case for the Paperless Courtroom : Technology: Using computers, Orange County Probate Court has reduced its crushing burden of paperwork.
Every week, visitors from around the world file through the halls of a popular tourist attraction in Orange County--not Disneyland, just the Probate Court in Orange.
The tourists are court administrators from Singapore, Kuwait and other distant places who have come to see how the court’s staff uses computers to reduce paperwork. After four years of tweaking and an investment of $1.3 million, Orange County’s Probate Court has moved a long way toward becoming a “paperless courtroom.”
In an era when Vice President Al Gore talks of “reinventing government” to make it more efficient, the Probate Court has done just that. With its updated technology, this unit of the Superior Court is now able to handle an expanding caseload without adding employees.
“This has made the court more accessible,” the court’s executive officer, Alan Slater, said of the change. “Before, files could be lost, and it could take days to find them. Now, our examiners get impatient if they have to wait 30 seconds for a document. It has changed our concept of time.”
The electronic system has lifted a crushing burden of paperwork from the court’s judges, clerks, attorneys and the public. Where once these parties fought over possession of case files, several can now read the same document simultaneously on the computer. The system shortens trial time and cuts the costs of litigation.
“I have a terminal in my chamber and one on the bench,” said Judge John C. Wooley, one of two judicial officers in the probate division. “Without question, it is a timesaver. I can bring a case to my fingertips with the click of a few buttons.”
Cases are filed on paper and converted into digital images, or data that computers can understand and manipulate. A device known as an optical scanner captures an image of the paper much like an office copier and stores it in an electronic file. The computer image can be processed and shared by clerks, examiners and judges.
An optical disk--a platter that resembles a music CD--stores the file until someone using a computer workstation retrieves it. The court’s computer, which changes optical disks much as a jukebox changes numbers, can store 90 disks, equivalent to 14 million sheets of paper. Anyone, including the public, can get access to the data from one of 57 terminals located throughout the court building.
Imaging has not dispensed with paper completely, but it is improving efficiency and its use is spreading. Court files don’t get lost; attorneys can talk more about their cases than their filings.
Such systems are in the future for paper-bound courthouses elsewhere. In Ventura County, court administrators are installing a system for their civil division for $250,000--cheaper than other systems because prices for computer hardware are dropping. Los Angeles Municipal Court uses an imaging system to process traffic fines.
“Orange County has been a real leader that we are looking at as a test,” said Sheila Gonzalez, executive director of the Ventura County Superior Court and a member of a subcommittee that participated in a report released earlier this year on the future of the California court system. “Imaging is one of the tools we can use to revolutionize the courts.”
Slater said it made sense to start with Probate, since Orange County’s retirement communities and wealthy estates generate as many as 3,000 cases a year and about 2,000 pages of paper filings daily, dealing with complex issues ranging from estate accounting to fights over wills.
Such cases often generate paperwork for decades.
In 1989, Orange County’s became one of the first courts in the nation to try an imaging experiment. It used computers and software from Costa Mesa-based FileNet Corp., which specializes in imaging applications.
Such applications are abundant in banks and insurance companies, but cash-strapped government entities have moved slowly to adopt the technology.
“The county looked at this as an investment, not a harebrained idea,” Slater said. “That’s not easy for government, and that’s why we’re always behind the private sector.”
Slater first had to make sure the court’s old mainframe system could be linked to the FileNet workstations.
Having everything work together has enabled court employees to use electronic mail, tap into files and send documents to each other without leaving their terminals.
FileNet won the imaging contract in 1990 and worked with the court staff for eight months to get the system going. The court employees took part in designing a customized system they would use every day.
“That made it a lot easier for them to accept,” said Jeannette McSkane, project manager and senior staff analyst.
Still, after 47 years of dealing with paper, it was hard for Betty Schulte to learn to work as a probate examiner on the computer. “It took hands-on training to get used to it,” Schulte said, “but I always like to learn something new.”
The change has also enabled Roseann Soldan, a manager, to supervise examiners’ work with a click of her mouse. She can find out how many cases were handled in a day and how much work was done.
So far, the system hasn’t eliminated warehouses full of court documents. State law mandates they be kept, but that may change when optical disk technology is proven suitable for long-term storage. Eventually, the system could be upgraded to allow for the electronic filing of documents from remote locations, cutting paper out of the picture entirely.
