Washington County State’s Attorney, Hagerstown, MD

When attorney Brett Wilson signed on with the Washington County State Attorney’s office, tape recorders, photos, notes and witness verbal testimony were brought to bear in the daily routine of trying cases. Film footage and a movie projector provided an occasional change of pace.

In the last few months all those prosecutorial tools have been rolled into one, which Wilson now says has transformed his job as never before in his twenty years before the bench. The prosecutor’s office has merged its Laserfiche document management system with the Washington County District Court’s Nomad public address system to put trial evidence and testimony into a whole new light.

“Sometimes it seems like the jurors are watching ‘Law and Order,’ only it’s live,” Wilson says referring to the popular television courtroom drama series. “It’s a whole new way of communicating with the court and jury.”

Instead of pulling papers out of briefcases, drawing diagrams on chalkboards, or setting up movie projection screens where, hopefully, most of the court can see them, Wilson and his colleagues just plug their laptops into the Nomad system and call up the evidence needed from court case files stored in the Laserfiche system back at the office.

Instantly, photos, illustrations, diagrams, sworn statements or signed confessions flash on monitors in front of the judge, clerk, witness box, defense table, and on two, 48-inch flat-screen TVs in front of the jury box. Telestrator technology allows attorneys or witnesses to draw on the images on the TV screens, doing for courtroom testimony what football commentator John Madden did for instant replay.

After the image is amended through the testimony provided, it’s then stored back into Laserfiche as a new version, with a hard copy printed out and entered into the court’s trial evidence file. It’s a little like Perry Mason meets Monday Night football, Wilson says, and it’s made a dramatic addition to courtroom testimony.

“We can illustrate for the jury all kinds of things from the image stored on Laserfiche,” he says. “Location of evidence, where an incident took place where the lighting was and what type of evidence was found.”

Wilson used a recent case involving a hunting accident to illustrate the Laserfiche/Nomad system. When a bullet had torn through a home in a housing development, hunters who were perched on a rocky outcropping on a neighboring farm ended up facing charges of criminal negligence.

An aerial photo of the farm stored in Laserfiche was called up from the case file and displayed on the court system of monitors and flat-screen TVs. The prosecuting attorney then illustrated on the image where the bullet was found tracing a clear path to a rocky knoll. The hunters were convicted but of lesser charges, in large part because the Laserfiche/Nomad system made clear their stray bullet may have been careless but not criminal.

“Pictures work a lot better when you can work better with them,” Wilson says. “By being able to display the image that way and mark where the hunters were and where the evidence was found, we provided concrete visuals for things that eventually helped the court make a better judge the case.

In another instance, video footage of a drug buy taken with a hidden microphone and camera by a police confidential informant proved the key in making the conviction. When the drugs and money changed hands the prosecutor was able to freeze the image and zoom in. Technology turned everyday court room testimony into a production worthy of the popular Hollywood television program CSI, Wilson says, all on 48-inch flat-screen TVs in front of the jury.

“The CSI effect is very much in effect,” he says. “And the jury’s ability to digest that information on widescreen TVs right before them can make a very big difference in the outcome of cases.”

In each case, the visuals made it much easier for the jury to make up its mind, Wilson says. Being able to call up such a range of images from Laserfiche in court makes it much easier for Wilson and his colleagues to do their jobs.

This system is the latest expansion of Washington County’s drive to go paperless. It all started two years ago with a presentation by Jeff Sauter, of the Eaton County, MI, prosecutor’s office, according to Washington County State’s Attorney Charles Strong. Since Sauter installed his Laserfiche system four years ago, he’s spoken about the many benefits of embracing paperless technologies, most centered around organizational advantages: never losing case files, less duplication of paperwork, faster access to files, remote and simultaneous access to files. Strong’s office wanted to take it a step farther and use it as a trial tool.

After Sauter’s presentation, Strong got the green light from his own IT people and the Laserfiche software was installed a year ago. Washington County has since been back-scanning archives and started using the new system in earnest just the past few months, Strong says.

Laserfiche WebLink gives attorneys open access to the database from the WiFi-enabled courthouse. Quick Fields instantly indexes scanned items as they are being stored into Laserfiche allowing Washington County to keep current with incoming documents while digging deep into the office’s massive archive, storing it all in Laserfiche. The office’s juvenile court files have been back-scanned into Laserfiche and now the Washington County staff are working on other departments.

“We still have old paper files we were forced to work with, but that number is going down daily,” Strong says. “We’re very satisfied with Laserfiche. It’s been a life saver. Instead of having all that paper flying around, we were able to centralize everything.”

While the Nomad system helps present testimony much more effectively, Laserfiche is the steward of that all important documentation, Wilson says.

“It’s the workhorse that makes sure those testimonial documents are right where they need to be when they need to be. Laserfiche is particularly helpful during sentencing and motions hearings when unexpected demands for documents such as a criminal record, are more common,” Wilson says.

“It gives you a feeling of comfort knowing that if something is in the case file and scanned into Laserfiche, it’s also right there with you in the courthouse,” he adds.

York County Court of Common Pleas, York County, PA

A short distance to the northeast in Pennsylvania, the head of the York County Information Technology Division, Al Raniero, said his office is also interested in Laserfiche’s potential in the trial setting. With the multi-faceted, multi-departmental Laserfiche system the county’s judicial agencies already have in place, York is definitely well on the way.

York County’s court system is three years into its push for paperless operations and has reached deep into the system’s various legal operations along the way. The Sheriff’s office, including their central booking office, the county jail; adult probation; children and youth services; Clerk of Courts office and divorce courts all use Laserfiche document management in various capacities.

Where the system is breaking new ground is using Laserfiche in real-time for court testimony in what’s called the county’s Divorce Masters Office. These officials are appointed arbiters in disputed divorce cases. Before the matter goes to court the Masters review the arguments from both sides in an effort to plot a course for the case in court. What happens in court can deviate from the sworn depositions submitted beforehand. When it does, the Divorce Master calls up the sworn statements stored in Laserfiche in real-time to see where testimony may have strayed from earlier statements.

However, when it comes to testimony in criminal cases, that documentation must still be displayed through conventional means on an audio-visual cart burdened with overhead projectors, tape players and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations downloaded onto laptops. All for display on a single large-screen TV for the entire court to view.

York County’s Laserfiche repository has plenty of photos and even streaming video that could all play a useful evidentiary role in court proceedings, but now must be retrieved from Laserfiche and converted into more traditional media for display on the AV cart. As more and more documents, film or photos are being stored in Laserfiche, improving the availability of that documentation in the trial setting seems as useful as it is inevitable, Raniero said.

“We could take it to that next step, that would be something that I would definitely like to discuss with the court,” he said. “That’s very doable for us as well.”

One stumbling block is how the system might be accepted by outside attorneys, Raniero said. Attorneys with varying technical skills come into the courthouse, and bringing them all up to speed quickly on such a novel system could be a challenge. The county is working hard in that department, expanding Laserfiche throughout the entire county court system.

The reluctance by some judges and court staff in York to embrace the technology early on has yielded to a wholehearted endorsement of its continued expansion—which has resulted in some 15 million court documents being stored in Laserfiche.

A computer terminal in the court clerk’s office now provides access to those files to members of the public. York is also working on a project to provide remote, password-secure access to the court case database through Laserfiche WebLink for private attorneys practicing in the York area.

“By the end of June we hope to have 15 million documents available to 400 attorneys practicing in the area,” said York Senior Project Administrator Mary Jane McCluskey. “Our court administrators are committed to the imaging project.”

So committed that Raniero wants to go farther still. Plans are in motion to install computer terminals in York’s 19 district courts, so judges there have direct, real-time access to Laserfiche throughout the county.

Such instant access has already greatly streamlined York County’s ability to take other judicial matters out of the courtroom. Video cameras, monitors and electronic signature pads posted in the judge’s chambers and the county Sheriff’s central booking facility have taken arraignments out of the courtroom almost entirely.

With Laserfiche WebLink, arrest histories and outstanding warrants are available to the judge in real-time in his chambers so there is no hand copying and delivering of those documents for each arraignment. The judge also appears on a monitor in central booking’s processing room for a video arraignment of the prisoner, who no longer has to be transported to the court for live arraignment.

Someday, judges will have immediate access to documents stored in the county’s Children and Youth Services department’s Laserfiche database when they are hearing dependency cases.

Raniero is setting his sights on new horizons as old ambitions are achieved in York’s roll-out of Laserfiche throughout more county agencies. Seed money from Congress and continued funding from property deed filing fees provided by York’s Records Improvement Fund have moved the three-year project along. Now, Raniero says he’s wondering if federal stimulus money might also be applied to new projects.

One idea Raniero is considering is a tracking system for paper-based case files. Right now, Laserfiche Audit Trail tracks access to confidential court files stored in electronic format, even as that access is opened up in the next few weeks to hundreds of attorneys who practice in the county’s court system.

However, paper files are still required from time to time and tracking them can be trickier. So, Raniero is proposing placing tiny microchips within the paper file folders. That way, court officers can know when files have been removed from county offices and where they’ve gone.

That technology, and the expanded use of Laserfiche documents in real-time trial settings are still a little way down the road. Raniero said. As new technologies are adopted and implemented new applications continually surface that promise new efficiencies. York County’s courts are proceeding judiciously and with deliberation, Raniero said.

“My approach is to do everything in phases,” Raniero said. “We need to walk before we run.”

Thanks to Prosecuting Attorney G. Byron Overton, they’re getting it. Overton and his staff are working with Laserfiche reseller Nancy Mathes of Paper-Lite to scan and store files electronically in Laserfiche. “We’re not going paperless,” Overton says. “We’re going file-less.”

Daviess County’s move to paperless file management began when Overton attended the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) annual conference, where he heard Laserfiche Luminary Jeff Sauter speak about his paperless prosecutor’s office in Eaton County, MI. Sauter, a well-known speaker at industry events, is known to host on-site visits from other prosecutors interested in his Laserfiche paperless file management system.

“I talk about Laserfiche whenever I can,” Sauter says. “When I present at continuing education events, I show screenshots of our Laserfiche repository and explain our various work processes. I also like to show photos of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ in our office. Instead of six file cabinets, we now only need a single drawer – and it doesn’t even hold paper! We use it to hold evidence CDs. The fact that we haven’t lost a single file in over three years is earth-shattering to other prosecutors.”

At the event Overton attended, Sauter asked attendees to guess how much time prosecutors’ staff spent working with case files. According to Overton, he and other attendees guessed 25 to 30 percent of their workdays. Sauter replied if they actually asked staff, they’d find it was likely closer to 50 percent.

Once Overton thought about it, he realized Sauter was right. “When we need older files, our administrative assistants have to physically retrieve them,” Overton says. “Somebody has to trek down there, find the file, get the file out and bring it back down here. It takes a lot of time, and it happens weekly.”

After Sauter’s presentation, Overton chose a Laserfiche Avante system for the prosecutor’s office. Although he knew it would take time to get up and running, he had confidence the payoff would be worth it. “We’re just running out of room,” he says. “Laserfiche is going to save us time, and eventually, save us money.”

Staff agree. “There’s no more looking for files,” says Chief Deputy Prosecutor Dan Murrie. “Everyone can work on the same file at the same time.”

The prosecutor’s office has six administrative assistants, each of whom has a Fujitsu fi-6130 scanner at their desk and scan documents into Laserfiche as they arrive. Mathes also worked with staff to create an electronic work process in Laserfiche that mirrors what they were used to doing with paper case files. The child-support side of the prosecutor’s office, with one attorney and four administrative assistants, is following the same process as the criminal side, as is civil cases.

When a case file arrives, staff create a standard document in Microsoft Word that lists necessary information such as the defendant’s name, case number and any other pertinent information. Using Laserfiche’s “Send To” feature, the Word document is sent to Laserfiche and a case file in Laserfiche is dynamically created. The case number and defendant’s information is automatically filled in the file’s template fields, and the template is attached to the original Word document. Staff then open the folder in Laserfiche and scan and enter all case documentation by document type, where a drop down list of document types speeds data entry. And at the end of the day, all scanned documents are full-text indexed for instant search and retrieval.

This system is just as easy for attorneys to navigate as it is for support staff. Attorneys are able to open the Word document and update their notes, just like they used to write on the front of a file folder—except instead of searching around the office for a file folder, they access documents right from their desktop computers. When they’re done entering notes, they simply close the Word document and their changes are automatically added to the case file stored in Laserfiche.

To guarantee disaster recovery, files are backed up twice at the courthouse and a third time off-site. “Even in the highly unlikely event all three back-ups fail, our files are largely made up of other agencies’ files, so we could reconstruct them if we needed to,” Overton says. And the original documents needed for trial exhibits—such as blood alcohol test results, documents from other counties and states and other supporting evidence—fit in one filing cabinet.

“It’s definitely a work in progress, but it’s one of those things where you have to realize that the problem didn’t occur overnight, and the solution won’t either,” says Mathes. “Byron and his staff have been great, hanging in there and sticking with it, knowing that the end result will be worth the effort.

“You can’t pick a perfect time to get started, you just have to get started,” she adds. “There’s no perfect conditions. With this office, they were just out of room, and that’s why they had to get started. But they have confidence that it will ultimately be successful, and it will pay off in greater efficiency.”

While the prosecutor’s office is still in the midst of deploying their Laserfiche solution, they still haven’t neglected to plan for the future. Overton says the attorneys in his office will eventually get laptops with “access to all files all the time.” And once the office is ready to implement the integrated business process management functionality that is included with the Avante system, Mathes will write a workflow rule that enables attorneys to automatically send necessary filing instructions and/or case files to support staff for additional processing. “We designed the template to enable Workflow automation in the future,” she says. “We were able to sit down, plan our implementation and do what we needed up front to make things easier as we move ahead.”

Once the office finishes scanning this year’s files, they plan to start on older files in storage, a process that will likely be handled by interns. “It’s a never-ending process,” Overton says. “We need more room. The courthouse has limited space. Everybody needs more room.”

And while Overton knows his office’s Laserfiche deployment is still unfolding, he has faith in its eventual outcome. “The conversion phase is in process,” he says. “It’s a difficult process, but it will ultimately prove to be worthwhile.”