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New Court Rule Sets Available:
Court Rule Sets Removed:
Detailed information regarding updated rules can be found on the Rule Update Details page.
New Court Rule Sets Available:
Court Rule Sets Removed:
Detailed information regarding updated rules can be found on the Rule Update Details page.
New Court Rule Sets Available:
Court Rule Sets Removed:
Detailed information regarding updated rules can be found on the Rule Update Details page.
The Black Line Call process involves assigning each case to two parallel courts in an attempt to move cases through the court more quickly (Shelton, 2009). Cases released from the Black Line pool depends on whether the case has been determined to require 18 or 28 months to complete discovery (Black Line Pool Flow Chart, 2006). It was originally implemented on March 19, 2004 by the Cook County Presiding Judge of the Law Division, Judge William D. Maddux. Judge Maddux noticed that cases were moving.
According to presiding Circuit Judge James P. Flannery Jr., the Black Line phase out remedies situations when attorneys don’t realize when it is time to receive a trial date. When this occurs attorneys need assigned dates changed or an order entered to vacate dismissal because of lacking resources for prosecution.
No newly filed cases will be added to the Black Line pool beyond April 26, 2016. Cases currently in the pool will remain there and re-identified as “transition cases.” The Black Line Case Process has transitioned into the New Trial Setting Call and will no longer be available on the Clerk of the Circuit Court website.
Impact on Affected Law Firms
The Black Line Pool phase out should not have a huge impact on Chicago law firms. Cases pending before the change will continue on the Black Line Call or “Master Calendar” until those cases are phased out. All new suits filed will be placed on the new “Trial Setting Call,” which is essentially just a new name for the Black Line. All cases will be put on a 28 month trial setting and the parties will be notified 120 days before that time to determine and decide possible trial dates. As before, if a case is not ready for trial within that 28 month timeframe it will continue to be called every 3 months until it is ready. This will cut down on the amount of motions filed to change trial dates and give the parties enough time to prepare for their trials.1
Impact on Attorneys
The immediate impact should allow attorneys to be relieved of some of the minutia of closely monitoring affected cases. Impacting both law firms and litigants, judges will be assigned to and work through cases from inception to ruling without change, which should have the effect of accomplishing what the Black Line Pool originally intended: to streamline cases through the court system faster. The Black Line pool structure required hearing and ruling judges to be different first below and then above the “black line,” causing the ruling judge to spend time acquainting themselves with cases moving above the Black Line and slowing down the process instead of speeding it up. Now, receiving notice should reduce the demand for attorneys to constantly check the Black Line Calendar.
1. Special thanks to Megan J O’Brien, Regional Docket Coordinator, Seyfarth Shaw LLP
Bibliography
Black Line Pool Flow Chart. (2006, January 17). Retrieved from cookcountycourt.org: http://www.cookcountycourt.org/Portals/0/Law%20Divison/Blackline%20Information/Law%20-%20BLACK%20LINE%20POOL%20(FLOW%20CHART)%20(LEGAL).pdf
Marine, F. J. (2009). CRIMINAL RICO: A Manual for Federal Prosecutors. Washington, D.C.: Justice.gov.
O’Brien, M. (2016). Seyfarth Shaw LLP.
Shelton, L. (2009). Black Line Trial Call – Judge Maddux’s Illegal Scheme to Quash Suits. Chicago: Pro Se Chicago.
New Court Rule Sets Available:
Court Rule Sets Removed:
Detailed information regarding updated rules can be found on the Rule Update Details page.
New Court Rule Sets Available:
Court Rule Sets Removed:
Detailed information regarding updated rules can be found on the Rule Update Details page.
Most people, and the majority of companies, seem to believe that financial and healthcare sectors are the only two that really need to be concerned with a data breach. However, law firms are certainly not immune. The breaches that occur at law firms generally do not make the news, because publicizing those events would be detrimental to the firm.
Unfortunately, there are significant problems with the under-reporting of data breaches at law firms. The main concern is that this under-reporting means that other law firms are not aware that they may be at risk.
The lack of knowledge often translates to a false sense of security, and can lead law firms to believe they are not vulnerable to cyber attacks and other security problems. That, in turn, means that law firms generally fail to take the right steps toward protecting themselves from data breaches. They do not take the right steps, and they do not use the proper technology, to ensure that all of the information they collect will be stored in such a way that it cannot be located by outside parties. The idea that not hearing anything about data breaches is good news is not necessarily true in this case.
It is true that data breaches are not as commonly seen in law firms as they are in some other industries, but that does not mean they are as unlikely as they may appear to be. They are still a significant concern and, what is more, they are a growing concern for all law firms around the globe. The intrusion of hackers is a big part of what causes data breaches, but that is the not the only problem. There are other causes and other sources that also have to be considered. When a law firm decides to ignore the risk it can mean a lack of responsibility to ethical and legal duties, but there are inexpensive and unobtrusive options that can be used to make things safer. And quite aside from data breaches, another tangible threat is sabotage.
As far back as 2011, the FBI was meeting with law firms to let them know that they were the targets of hackers, and that the threat to them would continue to grow in the future. Many firms wondered why this would be the case, but the answer is relatively simple: law firms have some of the largest collections of sensitive documents. The information they hold in their records can provide hackers with names, social security numbers, arrest records, marriage and divorce information, financial proceedings, custody battle results, and nearly anything else that is or could ever become a legal matter.
With that wealth of data at their fingertips, it is not surprising that law firms are targets of hackers and others who are attempting to collect data they are not authorized to view. As cyber attacks become more complex and hackers become more savvy, more law firms will be targets. Many of these firms have already been targets, and most of them either did not discover the problem until it was brought to their attention, or did not notice there was an issue until months later. Naturally, that is not considered acceptable to the law firm, or to the people who entrust that firm with their data and believe that it will be safe there.
It is not just outside attacks for which law firms must be prepared, either. There are many breaches of law firm data that come from inside the firm itself. A stolen laptop or a lost smartphone could mean that dozens or even hundreds of clients are suddenly vulnerable to having their personal information collected and misused. A number of law firms are also allowing attorneys and other who work at the firm to use their own devices to access records. While that makes sense from a business standpoint, it also allows for many more points of entry for anyone who would improperly obtain and use confidential information.
And yet, many law firms are not aggressive enough in pursuing cyber security and risk management measures. Just four years ago Jeffrey Brandt, of LegalITProfessionals.com, reported the following numbers emerging from an ILTA survey:
According to LawPracticeToday, part of the problem is a mindset. Compliance is not security – crossing off a checklist simply to obtain ISO 27001 compliance, for example, misses the point of by considering the list all-inclusive, and failing to address idiosyncrasies unique to one’s firm. Lack of lawyer acceptance of security processes – such as email encryption – can create exploitable gaps. An internal culture that embraces cybersecurity as a necessary fact can go a long way in identifying and preventing risk.
There is a heavy cost to a data breach. Data breaches in 2013 cost the company that experienced the breach an average of nearly five and a half million dollars. That is a staggering figure, and one that can vary depending on the size and kind of company, the size of the breach, and the type of data collected. While the idea that a law firm could have to pay out that kind of money is undoubtedly a frightening prospect for any firm, it is also important to note that the financial cost of the breach can be much more than just what the firm actually must pay out to solve and recover from the breach.
If word of the breach gets out, the law firm may also face lawsuits, fines, penalties, and a loss in consumer confidence that can mean current clients choosing to take their business elsewhere. It can also mean that potential future clients will choose a different law firm, thus costing that firm even more in unrealized revenue. Consumers want to do business with companies they can trust, and not being able to trust your attorney to keep your data safe is a significant issue that can become trouble for any law firm that has a publicized breach, or that must notify its current clients of a breach of their personal information.
Data breaches in 2013 cost the affected company an average of nearly $5.5 Million. Click to tweet this
The reputation that a law firm has is generally perceived to be its most valuable asset. Without that reputation that it has carefully built over the years, clients will seek out the services of another firm. It only takes an instant for someone to breach the law firm’s data, and with that breach comes the potential to damage or even destroy the reputation that the firm has so diligently created over a period of time. There is far more than just money at stake when it comes to any law firm and whether the data it collects is properly protected to avoid hacking or other types of breaches from taking place.
John Kuttler, CIO at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garret & Dunner, relates a story of being told, back in the early days of the Internet, that under no circumstances should he send an email to a client. It’s hard to read that sentence today without a smirk rising in one’s face. Likewise, the cloud is still viewed today with apprehension, but more and more aspects of litigation workflow and case management are migrating to the cloud. It is therefore critical that law firms have judicious processes to protect cloud-based litigation software solutions from data breaches.
Additionally, sending unencrypted data is also a poor choice, because it is far too easy for anyone with some hacking savvy to get hold of the data that is being sent. Without even the need to attempt to break the encryption on that data, it can be used for nefarious purposes right away. Reconsidering the ability for employees to use their personal cell phones and laptops, along with carefully vetting vendors, are also important steps.
While a data breach can still happen even with the best security, the lower the risk the better the law firm will be able to operate. Clients and potential clients will have more confidence in the firm, as well, which will keep its reputation intact. By working with the in-house capabilities the law firm already has and offering a professional level of technical support, it is possible for IT vendors and contractors to provide solutions at the enterprise level that protect the firm as strongly as possible. In the event of a breach, the incident response plans that are already in place will mitigate the damage quickly and efficiently.
Here are 5 mistakes that could create nightmares for your law firm:
Safeguard your law firm: Best practices in cybersecurity and risk management. Click to tweet this
Law firms that are concerned about cybersecurity and risk management have some steps they can take in order to help protect themselves and their clients from data breeches. An excellent article published by CNA lists the following best cyber-security practices:
As a wider measure, Jody R. Westby, a coauthor of four books on cybercrime and cybersecurity, recommends the development of an ESP (enterprise security program). Follow the link to the article that describes the process in detail.
By following these guidelines it is easier to keep a law firm safe from security breeches. Until law firms use the right kind of legal docketing software and the proper level of protection from hacking and other types of attacks on their data, there will always be an unnecessary level of vulnerability with which they must deal. By choosing to work with the best companies and products to protect their firms, much of this vulnerability, and the resulting risk that comes with it, can be eliminated.
Risk management for law firms extends well beyond the concern of cybersecurity, or being “hacked into” from an outside source that is attempting to collect and misuse data. In order to properly and completely provide the highest level of risk mitigation needed by a law firm, that firm must protect itself from outside threats as well as human error and flaws in the process. Certainly, hackers, competitors, ex-employees, and others who would get into the files and cause a problem are significant concerns. It is only that there is more to the issue than only worrying about what is coming in from the outside.
The docketing workflow is also a potential area for risk mitigation. If there are flaws in the processes or an egregious level of human error found within the firm, that can open the law firm up to legal malpractice lawsuits.
Few difficulties will damage a law firm’s reputation like being sued for legal malpractice and losing due to human mistakes or problems with the process the firm uses for its cases.
A law firm’s risk mitigation efforts should include improving and centralizing legal docketing and calendaring. Human error in docketing can be very damaging for clients, and for the law firm as a whole – as it can lead to missed dates and deadlines. One famous such case happened in 2014, when AT&T faced a loss of 40-Million in a lost appeal because of a docketing error.
Law firms are already adopting case management software, and the time has come for them to also adopt legal docketing software. The manual calendaring processes used by most law firms have inherent flaws, and they are decentralized and inefficient, as well. By replacing a manual docketing workflow with a robust legal docketing software solution such as eDockets Critical Dates, a law firm can reduce exposure to malpractice suits that stem from missed court dates and other deadlines.
A law firm’s risk mitigation efforts should include centralizing docketing & calendaring. Click to tweet this
Robust and court-rules-based, our docketing & calendaring platform is designed to ensure that the law firm stays up to date and on top of any scheduling and docketing issues, further protecting both its data and its hard-earned reputation.
Mention PACER in a roomful of attorneys, paralegals or docketing staff and you’re sure to get a strong reaction. You’re likely to hear strong opinions, and few of them positive. Not too many subjects elicit such unequivocally negative feelings in the litigation community as PACER.
Six years ago, a survey conducted by Sabrina I. Pacifici’s LLRX reflected that law firms spent in the five-figure range on PACER costs – with one firm spending almost $110,000 a year. Some of the comment in the survey bemoaned the inevitability of this cost, with sentiments such as “it gets expensive rather quickly,” and “there is no way to limit costs.”
While PACER administrators have defended the system’s fees as necessary to run the database, a 2006 Annual Report seems to point at a gap between expenses and earnings, indicating that PACER may in fact be twice as expensive at is needs to be. (A revenue of $62.3 million, compared to expenses totaling $27.6 million).
But the problems with PACER extend well beyond costs. A recent article in the Free Law Project outlines four key problem areas – cost being the first one. Two other PACER failings mentioned in this list have to do with the PACER user interface – from the overall poor user experience to the lack of document-level search. The fourth (and most important) shortcoming is the lack of accountability. As more and more law firms rely on PACER to provide accurate information and comprehensive access to public records, the system’s glitches can have a critical impact on both attorneys and clients.
Last year, when PACER took over 10,000 documents offline (Aug 11, 2014), Senator Patrick Leahy – chairman of the Judiciary Committee – sent a formal letter to Judge John D. Bates, head of the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), urging him to replace the removed documents.
The documents were eventually brought back online in September, 2014 (as announced on the PACER site). But for over a month, these documents remained unavailable, negatively impacting anyone depending on this public information.
While it is unclear who is ultimately accountable for correcting PACER’s shortcomings, this responsibility may belong to the chair of the Committee on Court Administration and Case Management – as of this writing Judge Wm. Terrell Hodges (M.D. Fl.). It should be noted that Judge Julie A. Robinson (D. Kan.) was chair of this committee at the time the large document removal took place. Some responsibility may also fall on the subcommittee for Information Technology, currently chaired by Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas.
What PACER lacks are feedback mechanisms for users to steer its framework, and transparency as to the decision-makers governing how the system is run.
The Fourth Amendment grants U.S. citizens a right to privacy over their papers, and the First Amendment grants a right to free association, unmolested by government agencies – which has been linked by legal scholars with the right to read anonymously, without one’s reading selections being tracked or recorded. Both rights are deeply undermined in our new digital age.
A brilliant analysis of PACER’s privacy problem was written by Michael Price of the Brennan Center for Justice. Price states that the problem is doctrinal, not generational – and calls for the creation of new frameworks to protect our privacy in the digital age.
Nearly a decade ago, legal scholar Julie Cohen wrote her landmark article “A Right to Read Anonymously.” She famously wrote, “A fundamental assumption underlying our discourse about the activities of reading, thinking, and speech is that individuals in our society are guaranteed the freedom to form their thoughts and opinions in privacy, free from intrusive oversight by governmental or private entities.”
“A fundamental assumption underlying our discourse about the activities of reading, thinking, and speech is that individuals in our society are guaranteed the freedom to form their thoughts and opinions in privacy, free from intrusive oversight by governmental or private entities.”
In its current configuration, PACER is an Orwellian nightmare. Each user’s reading selections are monitored, tracked, and stored for an indefinite period in PACER’s government-controlled databases. In order to read PACER’s documents, a user must give their full name, date of birth, phone number, physical address, email address, and a valid credit card. The intrusive nature of this system has led writers such as Brian W. Carver, of the Free Law Project, to call the system unconstitutional.
In a recent ARS-Technica article, Timothy B. Lee pointed at the sharp contrast between solid, usable interfaces at government sites such as Recovery.gov (showing detailed data on the spending of stimulus money within the Obama administration), and the Search system at the Library of Congress (Congress.gov) and the creaking maze that is PACER.
Some of PACER’s shortcomings are the lack of a full-text searching option, and very limited keyword search. White such limitations might have been understandable in 2006, or even in 2009, they are an anachronism in 2015.
The main problem with PACER’s interface is what’s been called a myopic fixation with its current core user base – i.e. lawyers and law students. For the lay person, the system is so deeply challenging as to be unusable.
As Brian Carver describes in his video, “Using PACER, what could possibly go wrong?” a search for a Maryland case leads a user to the Maryland District Court. This proves a dead end. The user finds a (partial) list of “recent opinions,” with no link to PACER. Should the user persevere, they may eventually run into a link to CM/ECF – a term not defined anywhere on the site, which stands for Case Management, Electronic Case Filing.
At that point, the user would face seven options, one of which is PACER.
That link takes the user away from the District of Maryland site and lands them on the main, federal PACER site – so that proves fairly useless. Instead, the user should click the unintuitive link “Electronic Case Filing,” and then somehow understand that they should further click on Document Filing.
This finally leads the user to the PACER login page for the District of Maryland.
At this point, the system expects the user to understand such terms as “appellate” and “legacy filing.” Not knowing these terms, a user is likely to click the “START” button, where the options to “E-File” or “View” are displayed. Choosing “View,” the user is then required to provide a credit card, as there will be a $0.10 per page fee. As Carver points out, It is extremely unlikely an average user would pursue their search beyond this point.
The registration page is quite heavy: 14 fields and a CAPTCHA feature.
Once registered, the user finally faces a Case Locator. As Carver’s video demonstrates, a search which costs the user $0.10 yields seven results – none of them relevant to their case of interest. (Carver goes out of his way to insist he did not specifically select a failing scenario – that this is a typical user experience).
Assuming the user would, incredibly, persist on their search, they will log in again. They’re now asked for a client code – which has not been defined at any previous stage of the process. They also face a dire warning: “WARNING: Search results from this screen are NOT subject ot the 30-page limit on PACER charges. Place be as specific as possible with your search criteria.” Carver’s assertion is that he himself has been charged over $50 for a single useless search.
An important distinction is that the user is alerted to transactions, and charges on their card, AFTER such charges have already been applied. A user familiar with e-commerce as it takes places on Amazon.com, Target.com etc. would be surprised by such site behavior.
Carver proceeds to show in his video how the user is greatly hindered in their search (12 “O’Malley” results, with no context – each resulting on fees and charges if clicked.) In Carver’s example, it takes nine tries to locate the relevant case. This is not a docket, however – it’s just a query. There are 10 possible links to click – with no explanation as to how to proceed, or the charges one may incur by clicking on each.
Carver clicks on “View a Document,” to face a dead end. He clicks on “History/Documents,” is charged $0.80 without warning, and has now found the court opinion he seeks.
Carver’s experience goes on, but it’s clear from his experience thus far that PACER proves a challenge – probably an insurmountable challenge – for the uninitiated user.
The particular failing that is most alarming for a new user is the way PACER surprised the user with fees and charges, notifying them AFTER the fact. This, combined with the arcane nature of the links, proves a mine field, punishing the user with fees for every wrong click.
As a result of various problems with the PACER system, the average member of the public has no meaningful access to federal court records. This is the “PACER Problem.” – Free Law Project
According to Tom Bruce, director of Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute, PACER is a case of “the wrong technology at the wrong time.” It came online in 1990, just before the Internet. At its heart, PACER is more a local bulletin board than a robust data-delivery website.
One can also blame the mindset of PACER’s administrators, who seem more focused on excuses for the status-quo than in finding solutions. These excuses are many – and most of them are wrong. They say that a user won’t be charged for fees under $15 per quarter. But this use-case is nearly non-existent for active users. They say opinions will soon be available via the GPO (Government Printing Office) – but only 19 out of 95 district courts are participating. The excuses go on, and reflect a fixed mindset unyielding to change.
But the real reason may be – as it usually is – a matter of money.
One of the many reasons PACER never gets fixed is that the money goes elsewhere. Back in 2010, Steve Schultze – Associate Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton, wrote a piece describing where PACER’s earnings end up. The system’s earnings have been routinely used to fix up courtrooms nationwide.
Schultze quotes the Hon. William E. Smith, from the District Court of Rhode Island, speaking at the 7th Conference on Privacy and Public Access to Court Records, as saying, “…also go to funding courtroom technology improvements, and I think the amount of investment in courtroom technology in ’09 was 
around 25 million dollars. […] Every juror has their own flatscreen monitors. We just went through a big upgrade in my courthouse, my courtroom, and one of the things we’ve done is large flatscreen monitors which will now — and this is a very historic courtroom so it has to be done in accommodating the historic nature of the courthouse and the courtroom — we have flatscreen monitors now which will enable the people sitting in the gallery to see these animations that are displayed so they’re not leaning over trying to watch it on the counsel table monitor. As well as audio enhancements. In these big courtrooms with 30, 40 foot ceilings where audio gets lost we spent a lot of money on audio so the people could hear what’s going on. We just put in new audio so that people — I’d never heard of this before — but it actually embeds the speakers inside of the benches in the back of the courtroom and inside counsel tables so that the wood benches actually perform as amplifiers. So now the back of the courtroom can really hear what’s going on. This all ties together and it’s funded through these fees.”
According to a chart from the Administrative Office of the US Courts, over half of PACER’s $146 million revenue in 2013 went to fund other initiatives.
Another drain on PACER’s coffers is the collection itself: Every quarter PACER mails out paper bills to delinquent users, and then deals with the onerous collection process – which may include prosecution of delinquent debtors.
Considering how antiquated, poorly designed and error-prone PACER’s interface proves to be, why hasn’t anyone tried to fix it? The answer is that someone did try.
Back in 2009, the late Reddit co-founder and internet activist Aaron Swartz collaborated with open government advocate Carl Malamud (founder of PublicResource.org) and a few others to create a better PACER. They aimed to scrape the entirety of the database and provide a better user-experience. “PACER is just so awful…” Malamud told New York Times, “The system is 15 to 20 years out of date.”
The pair downloaded 20 million pages of documents – about 20 percent of the contents in PACER’s database – before the initiative was shut down by the FBI.
Law students are likely to have free access to LexisNexis and WestLaw. (Neither of these is quite as comprehensive as PACER’s database, but they’re both immeasurably more user-friendly.)
Other valiant efforts have been made to offer PACER alternatives.
RECAP (ironically named as PACER spelled backwards) is a great little tool that alerts PACER users of documents already available in the RECAP archive – potentially saving the user some fees. Currently, RECAP includes all US District and Bankruptcy courts, has an advanced search feature and offers free browsing.
Inforuptcy offers a similar service to RECAP. Downloads from Inforuptcy cost 5 cents, as opposed to PACER’s 10 cents or more. For those documents not currently in Inforuptcy’s database, the user is re-directed to PACER.
Justia Dockets & Filings is a free service that includes U.S. District Courts and Circuit Courts of Appeal. Users can search by party name, judge, type of suit, court and date range. Justia is not as complete as PACER, but users are re-directed to PACER for those cases not in its database.
We’ve done our part as well. In developing the eDockets docketing & calendaring platform, we have included a set of solutions that guarantee our users won’t get tripped up by PACER’s charges and unreliability. One of those tools is ECF Verify, which scans for any changes in the court dockets that did not generate email notifications from PACER, and sends an alert to the subscribing attorney.
What is your opinion? Should PACER get a facelift to improve its troublesome interface? Should its confounding e-commerce methodology be overhauled for greater transparency, with a shopping cart process similar to retail sites such as Amazon.com? Or should it be scrapped altogether, replaced by a new system built on present-day technology?
Also, share your thoughts on the challenges you face in your day-to-day interactions with PACER. Have you tamed the beast? Have you found an alternative? Or is it, as it is for most, an unavoidable daily struggle?
New Court Rule Sets Available:
Court Rule Sets Removed:
Court Rule Sets Renamed:
Detailed information regarding updated rules can be found on the Rule Update Details page.
New Court Rule Sets Available:
California Superior Court, Nevada County – Probate Division
Nevada Justice Court
Nevada Justice Court, Reno Township
Detailed information regarding updated rules can be found on the Rule Update Details page.
