Legal Industry XML Standards
The judicial system has made good use of XML in the past few years. This
section cov-ers one of the more notable legal industry–focused standards that
helps to simplify the process of exchanging information in the context of law
interpretation and litigation.
Legal XML
Even lawyers need XML. The need to file court papers, exchange documents
with other legal authorities and clients, and generally simplify life has
resulted in the development of XML vocabularies focused on the legal
profession. A number of these efforts com-bined to result in the Legal XML
initiative, whose mission is to develop open, nonpropri-etary standards for
legal documents and associated applications.
Legal XML began in November 1998 and rapidly grew to over 870
participants by 2001. It is made up of roughly 50 percent private legal
companies, 25 percent government insti-tutions, and 25 percent academic or
nonprofit organizations, with a mostly United States–based population that is
increasingly developing its presence in Australia, Canada, and Europe. Despite
the novelty of applying XML to the legal profession, the “Legal XML” idea is
actually quite dated. Soon after Charles F. Goldfarb, who himself was a lawyer,
developed SGML, Alan Asay, a brilliant lawyer and technologist, created civil
and criminal SGML Document Type Definitions (DTDs) for the Utah state courts.
It only took the continued development of these original SGML documents,
combined with the proliferation of the Internet and XML, to make Legal XML
happen.
The issue of what is considered to be a “legal” document is an
interesting one. Theoretically, almost every electronic document can be
categorized as “legal,” because the law is concerned with the exchange of
day-to-day documents in the context of business as well as interpersonal
interaction. However, this scope is too wide for any organization to build a credible
standards base. Therefore, the Legal XML group has sought to address the legal
documents that are of most importance and the need for standardization.
The domain of Legal XML documents is divided into various subdomains by
virtue of their horizontal or vertical application. In this context, vertical describes specific legal
document domains, such as public law (including legislation, bills, and
statutes), private law (including contracts and wills), court filings,
transcripts, judicial decisions, and pub-lications (including legal books and
law journals). Horizontal vocabulary
describes gen-eral information of relevance to most legal documents, such as
citations, general names and addresses, and general document structure, such as
tables, outlines, paragraphs, and signatures. Legal XML standardizes these
various horizontal and vertical vocabulary structures as well as coordinates
their efforts within the larger legal community.
The Legal XML effort is divided into workgroups that focus on either
horizontal or verti-cal domains, such as court filings and transcripts. These
workgroups then develop speci-fications that define the actual technical XML
standards. An additional two groups, called “Legal” and “Horizontal,” then
synchronize and harmonize the work of these vari-ous groups to make sure no
redundant or contradictory work is done. As of this writing, Legal XML has not
yet produced a final, “recommended” standard. However, the group has published
its first proposed standard in the “Court Filing” area. The general approach
that Legal XML takes to its work is the Greatest Common Denominator (GCD)
approach, which solicits feedback from the community at large and then
includes as many of those features as possible, making many of them optional.
The discussion on the merits of this approach is discussed earlier in this
chapter.
The Court Filing document describes the information required for
electronic court filing and the structure of that information. It doesn’t
include any information that regards the actual content of the pleading, such
as contracts, orders, or judgments. As such, the first proposed specification
is somewhat basic, but it illustrates well the goals of the Legal XML group.
The architecture makes use of a three-tier application model that uses three
cooperating applications: the client (consisting of an application on the
user’s desk, called the Electronic Filing Provider [EFP]), the server (also
known as the Electronic Filing Manager [EFM]), and the Case Management System.
The document specifies a LegalEnvelope element that is the root element of the Legal XML document. The LegalEnvelope element identifies the type of
message and routing information as well as indicates the contents contained
within. Within the LegalEnvelope element is a Legal entity that in the case of this proposal contains a CourtFiling element that specifies individual Filing elements. A sample of a Court Filing Subsequent Filing can be
found in Listing 22.7.
LISTING 22.7 Legal
XML Court Filing Example (LegalEnvelope omitted
for brevity; it doesn’t validate
because it’s an excerpt)
<?xml version=”1.0” standalone=”yes”?>
<!DOCTYPE LegalEnvelope SYSTEM “LegalEnvelope.dtd”> <!--
Creation date and time: 10-Mar-00 22:36Z --> <LegalEnvelope
Version=”1.0”>
...
<CourtFiling>
<Filing>
<Actors>
<Actor
ID=”J01”>
<Title>Presiding Judge</Title> <Name ID=”Ref01.n1”>
<Person>
<FullName>Margret Marly
Jefferson</FullName> <FirstName>Margret</FirstName>
<MiddleName>Marly</MiddleName>
<LastName>Jefferson</LastName>
</Person>
</Name>
<Role>
<RoleName>Presiding
Judge</RoleName> </Role>
</Actor>
</Actors>
<FilingInformation
ID=”Ref01.1”> <SpecialHandling/> <CourtInformation>
<Location ID=”D1116”/>
</CourtInformation> <CaseInformation>
<FullCaseNumber>D1116-CR-99-218</FullCaseNumber>
<CaseTitle>State v. Onereallybadman</CaseTitle>
<CaseCategory>criminal</CaseCategory>
<CaseYear>1999</CaseYear>
</CaseInformation>
</FilingInformation> <LeadDocument ID=”Ref01.1.d1”>
<DocumentInformation>
An Actor is by reference to an Actor
in the Filing Actors list. <Actors>
<Actor ID=”Ref01.n1.1” Reference=”Ref01.n1”/> </Actors>
<Submitted>
<DateTime>
<Date>20000202</Date>
<Time>18:36Z</Time>
</DateTime>
</Submitted>
<DocumentDescription>
<DocumentTitle>
Order for Pre-Trial Hearing has
been scheduled </DocumentTitle>
<DocumentType
DocumentCode=”8251”>
ORD:
PRE-TRIAL/SCHEDULED </DocumentType>
</DocumentDescription>
</DocumentInformation>
This document content shows a
document residing on the web as the input . <DocumentContent
ID=”Ref01.1.d1.dc” MimeType=”application/pdf”
href=”ftp://nowhere.com/JudgeJefferson/cr/99/218/Orders/PretrialHearing.pdf”/>
<Attachment ID=”Ref01.1.d1.a1”>
An attachment to the lead
document. <AttachmentDocumentInformation> <Submitted>
<DateTime>
<Date>20000202</Date>
<Time>18:36Z</Time>
</DateTime>
</Submitted>
<DocumentDescription>
<DocumentTitle>Attached
text</DocumentTitle> <DocumentType>Text</DocumentType>
</DocumentDescription>
</AttachmentDocumentInformation> This shows
text as the document content.
<DocumentContent ID=”Ref01.1.d1.a1.dc”
MimeType=”application/text”> The attached image file provides new
information in this case. </DocumentContent>
This is an attachment to an
attachment. <Attachment ID=”Ref01.1.d1.a1.a1”>
<AttachmentDocumentInformation>
<Submitted>
<DateTime>
<Date>20000202</Date>
<Time>18:36Z</Time>
</DateTime>
</Submitted>
<DocumentDescription>
<DocumentTitle>Attached
image</DocumentTitle> <DocumentType>image</DocumentType>
</DocumentDescription>
</AttachmentDocumentInformation> This shows a
BLOB as the document content.
<DocumentContent ID=”Ref01.1.d1.a1.a1.dc” Size=”8191”
MimeType=”image/jpeg” ContentEncoding=”Base64”>jk075pfb3205hafnbci ...
asfawrq2357c=rqttpbc</DocumentContent>
</Attachment>
</Attachment>
</LeadDocument>
</Filing>
</CourtFiling>
</Legal>
</LegalEnvelope>
Legal XML is a small but growing effort and is using its clout to
promote its standards efforts. It also uses partnerships with existing
organizations, such as the Joint Technology Committee of COSCA/NACM, the
National Court Reporters Association, SEARCH, the California Administrative
Office of the Courts, and LEXML, to help develop and promote its standards.
Other XML efforts on the legal front include UELP, XCI, National Center for
State Courts/Lexis, Washington State Bar XML Study Committee, Joint Technology
Committee of COSCA and NACM, National Conference of State Legislatures, and
Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) for time and billing.
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