 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network. One of the greatest challenges that I face in working with multi-party cases as an operations manager is communications, making sure that everyone is on the same page. The greatest challenge that I personally face is trying to get all the attorneys to agree on a particular date and time. Well the challenges with multi-party cases are trying to get everyone to use the same equipment. It's also taking into account that it's just more people and everything exponentially increases. So it's more water pitchers, it's more cups, it's more Kleenex, it's more paper, it's more chairs. It's almost as if it's a cascade of challenges who take care of one is another waiting in the wings. The biggest burden on the clerk's office is really on the jury office and getting the jury arranged. I know that I have to notify the jury office well in advance if I'm going to have a large panel and we really have a benchmark here of a couple of months' notice. The greatest challenge when managing multi-party cases is trying to satisfy the needs and wishes of the judge, the lawyers, the litigants and the jurors if it's a jury trial. How do you prepare yourself to handle a big case? How do you get ready for it? Well I can tell you a couple of things. If you have never done a long trial, a complex case with several parties, it'll probably for the judge the most tiring and demanding work a trial judge has done. Make sure the last thing the judge is thinking about is if only these details were taken care of. It's up to court staff to make sure those details are taken care of and we're the ones with the experience to ensure that they are. Live from Washington D.C., the Federal Judicial Center presents Working with Multi-Party Cases. Now here is your host, Judy Roberts. Hello and welcome to Working with Multi-Party Cases. As we saw in the opening clip, the challenges court faced when working with multiple parties are numerous. But we found out that many courts have come up with many effective and innovative practices to help with multi-parties. Today, through discussions with panelists both here in the studio and at 11 push-to-talk sites, we will explore those challenges and learn what court units are doing to successfully manage them. By sharing these effective strategies and practices, we may better understand the variety of options we have when working with these cases. The court units participating today will tell us what works for them, but these same practices may or may not be effective for you. That is for your judges and your court to decide. Some of the practices we'll talk about include pre-trial conferences, electronic case filing and tracking systems, jury management, courtroom activities, in exhibits and even storage space to name a few. So many subjects, so little time. Although at times this broadcast may seem to focus on defendants and criminal cases, as we go through this program, you'll see our emphasis is on the challenges we face with all multi-party cases in bankruptcy and district. This broadcast is for you. Many of you wrote to us through our court-to-court evaluations and asked us to do a program on multi-parties. We ran your suggestions through our National Advisory Committees on Education and Training and your colleagues endorsed your recommendations. Today we encourage you to participate, ask questions and share your thoughts with us. We have built time in for discussion throughout our program. Our toll-free phone and fax numbers will appear on the screen throughout the broadcast. Feel free to use the fax form that was online at jnet.fjc.dcn at any time during the broadcast. And don't forget, the participant guide is also available at jnet.fjc.dcn if you have not already downloaded it. Now onto the agenda. To help us move through today's topics, we've divided the program into three segments, loosely following the order of a case. Our first panel will focus on court challenges and effective practices when preparing for trial, after which we will take a short break and come back to our second panel on challenges and effective practices during trial. Then we'll cover post-trial court challenges and practices with our third and last panel, with a final wrap-up at the end. You'll see me throughout the program, primarily as the voice of the fax, but now let's get right to it and turn the program over to our moderator, Bob Fagan, who many of you already know from his work on court to court. Bob will introduce our first panel. Thanks, Judy. This first session deals with the challenges that court staff face and the effective practices that courts have utilized when preparing for trial in a multi-party case. For our first panel discussion, we have Richard A. Haug, Jr., Chief Probation Officer for the District of Columbia, Kathy Gould-Felman, Chief Deputy U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida and Colleen Ligas, Courtroom Deputy of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of New York. Welcome. Thank you, Bob. We also will turn to a number of push-to-talk courts for additional comments. Before we get started, I want to emphasize that we've grouped certain issues and subjects together, even though we realize that there's a lot of overlap. We did this strictly for discussion purposes. For example, we'll talk about the designation of a lead attorney and jury-related issues during the second panel discussion, even though they're typically handled very early on in an entire process. In opening each discussion, we'll set the stage, so to speak, with a short video clip. Let's take a look at the first one. The first challenge you face when you get one of these whether through a normal lawsuit that's filed with you or whether it's through the assignment system from the multi-district panel is the organizational steps you need to take to put it in place properly. If you don't do that, you're going to be way behind the eight ball. So what we usually do is set up a meeting with the judge and we make sure that the judge is there, the law clerk, the courtroom deputy, the court reporter if necessary, and any other people from my staff who it makes sense to have there, whether it be courtroom technology, procurement people interpreting, or in the jury administrator. There are a number of logistic questions that arise in a multi-defendant case involving the courtroom itself. For example, how the tables are going to be positioned, how the defendants are going to be positioned. It's hard enough sometimes moving tables and chairs around to get 20 attorneys on one side, but then when you have to have a few monitors at each table and a few pieces of equipment, that's just impossible to do. We try to make sure that there's one system for both sides to use or both or all parties to use. So the first thing we'll do is sort of sit down and we have a checklist and we'll say, let's go into the courtroom and talk about how physically you want the courtroom set up based on the number of parties involved. There's many, many facets to communicating in a multi-defendant case, making sure that the judge communicates with the courtroom deputy, making sure the courtroom deputy communicates with the marshal's office, with the jury office, all of us is concerned with a multi-party case. It's effective planning. It's talking to the judge, getting a sense of what the judge wants done and making sure those things get done. Again, that's something right in the beginning to sit down with the court staff and tell them, this is a big case. We have lots of pleadings, we have lots of calls from lawyers and we have to organize how you're going to be spotted and handled it. From that short clip and the one that introduced the broadcast, the theme is the importance of communication and effective planning right at the front end, perhaps even when you first suspect that you may have a multi-party case. Typically, I think we tend to think of probation more with post-trial related issues. Rick, as a Chief Probation Officer, how does communication and planning right up front impact what you do with regard to multi-party cases? Communication and effective planning impact everything we do, Bob, in a multi-party case, as these tend to be cases with significant complexities. Probation officers and supervisors, Chiefs and assistants, even our Automation Department must develop the information sources and communication systems they need to help us gather information from the many sources in multi-defendant cases. Proper planning involves defining processes, establishing systems, accountability, and our roles in multi-defendant cases. Explain a little bit about when you get involved and how it's the impact in a multi-party case. The probation office in the District of Columbia does not normally handle bond matters or release matters that the Pre-Trial Services Office handles in many districts. We normally become formally involved when a referral is made for a pre-sentence investigation report. Our relationship and systems of communication, however, give us knowledge in advance of formal referrals. The courtroom deputy, Pre-Trial Services, the Assistant U.S. Attorney, the judge, all our sources of information about multi-defendant cases before they're actually formally referred. As the case proceeds, we use these sources and the like to obtain information on the roles of the various defendants in the overall offense and victims' issues and restitution. Frequently, some parties are cooperating with the prosecution. Others plead guilty to offenses that may not accurately reflect their true role in the offense and others proceed to trial. Our ongoing communication with the various players in a multi-party case enables us to coordinate our activities and deploy our resources effectively. What do you find to be the most effective way of communicating? It seems that you're communicating with so many people as part of the process. We certainly are, Bob. We've devised a number of methods to maintain effective communication. We have formal orientation and sentencing guideline training for judges. We advise counsel and defendants of our role and our responsibilities as well as requirements in an investigation with informative handouts and we print a timeline in the Federal Public Defender quarterly. We also have annual meetings with defense counsel and panel attorneys. We also use the old-line fax and telephone and letters to communicate with people as well as email. A very important group that we coordinate with and communicate with is courtroom deputies. They are frequently very challenging to get a hold of because time is so tied to the judges and to the judges' time on the bench. We find that email works very well with them. Colleen, that's a perfect segue since you're one of those courtroom deputies that Rick referred to. In keeping with the theme of communication and coordination, what would you add to what Rick has said in terms of the perspective of courtroom deputies? As Rick just pointed out, Bob, communications is an essential element to effectively manage a multi-party case. When criminal matters, it's the courtroom deputies' responsibility to contact those agencies and or parties that are necessary to the proceeding. When an arrest is taken place, I would contact the pretrial services division of probation as soon as possible so that a pretrial officer has the opportunity to meet with the defendant and to compile a report that would make recommendations to the judge, such as a bail issue. Now, when a civil case is filed with the district court, the decision of the clerk's office would issue our general order 25. This is a standardized civil pretrial order that has been adopted by our judicial officers of the district. This order has proven to be an effective district practice because it directs the plaintiff to effectuate service in 60 days instead of the standard 120 days under the federal rules. This order also contains an initial pretrial conference that is a case management... There's a case management plan contained in this general order, and the significance of this case management plan is that it directs the parties to meet prior to the conference. They have the opportunity to discuss amongst themselves the issues of the case, the time needed to complete the rule 16 deadlines, and this also gives them an opportunity to discuss settlement amongst themselves prior to them even meeting with the judge. You have a practice in the northern district of New York of communicating with attorneys both in criminal and civil multi-party cases regarding setting pretrial conference and trial dates. Why do you think that's such an effective practice? How does it impact what you do? What this does is at the conference when the judge meets with them, he can then set the scheduling deadlines that the parties need to abide by in order to progress the case of trial. Also, in this pretrial order that we issue, it directs the parties to... it advises them up front what the pretrial submissions are that they are required to submit and also lets them know as to their exhibits, how to mark them, expert disclosure, things of that nature. Let me turn then to the bankruptcy side of the house. Kathy, bankruptcy adversary cases are more similar to civil cases, right? And do you have many multi-party adversary cases and what challenges does your court staff face? Well, yes, Bob. They are very similar to civil cases in the district court. But by their nature, they're handled somewhat differently. An adversary is a lawsuit arising in or related to a main bankruptcy case. And because a main bankruptcy case may not be able to progress to a fully administered status, all pending adversary cases must be resolved. Therefore, it's very important that you handle them as expeditiously as possible. And in the Southern District of Florida, our judges are united in their belief that when you file an adversary case, you better be ready for trial. In fact, we set pretrial and trial dates 90 to 120 days from the date of the filing of the complaint. We also shortened the answer period from 30 to 25 days. I agree with Colleen and Rick that communication and upfront planning are very, very important. In the Southern District of Florida, we have many multi-party adversary cases, and we also have multiple adversary cases filed at the same time, each involving different parties, but all related to one main bankruptcy case. Well, tell us about a little bit more. You have a local rule I understand also there. Tell us about how that process works and why it's applicable to multi-party cases. Well, we have in the Southern District of Florida by local rule, we have established a very effective practice for managing adversary proceedings, and it's especially beneficial in dealing with multi-party cases. When the complaint is filed, at the time the complaint is filed, the attorney for the plaintiff must submit two required local forms. Those forms are, one, a summons and notice of pretrial and trial in an adversary proceeding, and number two, an order setting, filing and disclosure requirements. And at the time the complaint is filed, these two forms are presented to the intake clerk, who fills in a pre-established pretrial and trial date and also conforms the pretrial scheduling order. She also or he also certifies that a copy of that order has been served on the plaintiff's attorney. This all happens at the intake counter when the complaint is filed. That pretrial scheduling order requires the attorney at the time of pretrial to submit another local form of a pretrial order, which must be agreed to by all the parties. And that order sets forth various pretrial requirements and also sets forth, for an example, how long the trial is going to take, whether or not you need a special setting and also directs how exhibits are to be handled during the trial. How does your court track the responses and file by multiple parties? Well, Bob, we don't. Actually, no, not quite that simple, but because we have this process up front that sets the pretrial and the trial date, it really imposes the burden on the plaintiff's attorney to ensure that all defendants within the time frame set forth for the pretrial and the trial date. And, of course, their answer time is shortened. So they must ensure that all defendants are served, or because we have a trial date, they have to come back to the court and request a continuance and justify to the court why they were unable to serve certain defendants. Kathy, one of our push-to-talk courses, your court, the Southern District of Florida, and let me ask them what challenges in docketing and tracking. I think Joe Falzone from your court is on there. So Joe, are you there? Yes, I am, Bob. Hi, how are you? My name is Joe Falzone. I'm the operations manager with the Backruptcy Court in Southern Florida. From an operational perspective, I just want to reiterate how critical a role communication and preparation play in setting the stage for a more smooth case disposition. From the knowledgeable intake clerk who reviews the initial case and prepares our local required forms to the case administrator who opens and meticulously enters all the defendants and all the parties and also tracks the related deadlines, the answers, the amended complaints, and also the judgments, et cetera, to the courtroom deputies who calendar the pretrial and trial cases. The point I'm making is that in reviewing and opening and calendaring are just three pieces of the pie and that they concerted effort needs to be, you know, an effort not only by the clerk's office but also by the public and also the bar alike. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Let me again remind participants to fax or call in any questions they may have relating to this subject and we're going to try our best to get them put on the air. We've talked now a little bit about communication that has to take place right at the start, right at the front end. We're going to move on to another issue but still very much related to communication and that is courtroom logistics. Also joining us via a push to talk is the D.C. District Court and Betsy Paray, Chief Deputy for Administration. Betsy, what about some of the challenges in terms of courtroom logistics and staff issues that your staff face in dealing with multi-party cases? It must take quite a bit of coordination and I understand you schedule meetings with court staff and judges to deal with courtroom logistics that may apply to a particular case. Yes, Bob, we do. As soon as I hear that we have a trial date for a multi-party case, I schedule a meeting with the judge to discuss a number of administrative issues that need to be addressed and hopefully resolved in advance of the trial. The judge usually invites the courtroom deputy, the law clerks, and if it's a criminal case, someone from the U.S. Marshal Service to attend. I will bring along the jury administrator, the courtroom technology administrator or the director of interpreting services depending on the requirements of the trial. I have found that judges usually have a vision of how they want the trial to go but appreciate the assistance of court staff and make recommendations based on our experiences with other multi-party cases. Most judges are focused on the legal issues of the case and don't have time to focus on the administrative issues that need to be addressed. I have found that judges are very receptive to accepting recommendations that make sense and have been used successfully in other trials. When we meet, I will run through a checklist of items. For example, we will discuss jury selection process, how many jurors will be serving, how many alternates, will there be a pre-screening questionnaire, will there be pre-wardia questionnaire? We will also talk about the furniture in the courtroom. With multi-party cases, we usually need to bring in an additional counsel table or two to accommodate all the extra participants and attorneys. We ask if counsel will be bringing in boxes, file cabinets, or other items that may take up space. We find out if there will be a need for additional easels, small tables, or more water pitchers. We will also discuss whether we need to submit a new schedule to GSA for heating and cooling depending on the season to ensure that the courtroom is a comfortable temperature, even when accommodating a significantly higher number of people in the courtroom. Basic stuff. In criminal cases, the deputy marshal will participate and make recommendations as to how the furniture should be set up to ensure that security issues are addressed. At this time, we will discuss any special needs or requirements of the marshal's service. If the case involves interpreting, the director of interpreting services will participate to make sure there is an appropriate workspace and seating for two interpreters who will be team interpreting during the trial. The interpreter will also confirm the language is required and discuss the type of equipment that will be used during the trial. Betsy, I think you have John there, too, to talk a little bit about technology. We will discuss the availability of trial support rooms for counsel and what amenities each room should offer. In this court, judges usually appoint lead counsel to serve as a primary contact person for dealing with administrative matters, distributing orders, and submitting motions on issues of common concern. We will find out who lead counsel is and work with them on any administrative matter that may arise. Lastly, we will discuss what courtroom technology the court would like to use and what the lawyers plan to use. We are fortunate in this court to have a full-time staff person dedicated to coordinating all of our courtroom technology issues, and at this time, I would like to introduce John Kramer, our courtroom technology administrator. Hi, Bob. Hi, John. As Betsy said, I'm the courtroom technology administrator here in D.C. Over the past couple of years, as you probably know, evidence presentation technology has really taken off and counsel like to use it a lot, and our judges really like to use it to kind of push trials along. Anytime we're going to have a multi-party case that they're going to use technology, I make sure first that counsel have received approval from the judge to use the technology. And then I make sure that they are going to be sharing the equipment because we don't want two or three different systems in the courtroom that just takes up all the extra space, not that we have any extra space anyways, but so we try to get one monitor per table, one ELMO, one computer input, one witness monitor, things like that. And most importantly is training. A lot of counselors need training, so I offer training to any or all parties well ahead of trial. We don't want them coming in the first day and not having any idea how to display a document to the judge or jury. So I would just jump on the communication bandwagon that, you know, as long as we meet ahead of time with attorneys and find out what they need to use, if they want to use our equipment or bring in their own, that we're all on the same page as far as what they're going to need and I'll train them on anything they need for the technology aspect. Thanks, Betsy and John. As mentioned before, we're going to be talking about lead attorneys as well as dealing with exhibits during the next segment. Before we open it up for questions from participants, how about a quick summary statement by panel members? Rick, let's start with you. Bob, I would say that establishing relationships and communication systems and accountability are really critical to our ability to handle multi-party cases. Colleen. Bob, I believe that successful case management of multi-party cases begins with effective communications from the most earliest possible stage of the action. Once the parties know up front what's expected of them, the parties can then prepare themselves to proceed a trial. Kathy, you have the final word. Establishing effective practices for managing adversary cases, especially ones involving multi-parties. You reduce the delay in administering main bankruptcy cases which may not be able to progress to a fully administered status until all related adversary cases have been resolved. I think New York Southern has joined us now and let me ask them that same question that I did before. I believe that there is no doubt jury was that correct? Oh, I'm sorry, that's New York Southern. I apologize. We're going to turn to them a little bit later. We'd be interested in hearing now from other courts' participants as to how they handle some of these courtroom logistics challenges on multi-party cases. So let's now open up the discussion to everyone. Let us know via telephone or fax about some of your effective practices. Bob, can you hear us this time? Sure can. Is this Maria? Hi, this is Maria Mabeal. Hi, Maria. How are you? I'm glad to know you can hear us this time. I'm going to have Jeff Reiner my operations manager explain what we were going to explain before. Thank you very much. You had asked us a question about something that we had done at one point and then changed our mind about later back in 1993 when we went. Correct. You had indicated that you developed a procedure for dealing with multi-party cases and then found out that it didn't work exactly as you expected and you had to make some changes perhaps going back to the older way of doing business. Could you explain a little bit about that? Sure, Bob. Just briefly, when we went on ICMS criminal back in 1993, we decided that in order to keep our documents sequential in one file we would just have one master file for however many defendants we had. We proceeded to do that and began setting things before the judge and sending the files up. The judges found it very restrictive when they wanted to look at defendant number four and they had to look through 10 defendants pleadings in order to find them. We also had problems with hearings. The defendants were set at the same time before one magistrate before another magistrate judge and there was only one file. So we abandoned that process. We went back to individual files for each defendant and that's how we handle our files today. That way they can be several different ones in several different places at the same time. It's very easy to do appeals with that way too. Thank you so much. I want to thank our first panel and the Push to Talk participants. One of the challenges mentioned in our discussion is the ability to effectively track the cases in which there are multi-party parties. Now here's Judy to discuss how electronic court filing works with multi-party cases. Thanks Bob. We're very pleased to have with us today Cecilia Morris, Bankruptcy Clerk of the Court for the Southern District of New York and Kathleen Farrell, Chief Deputy Clerk for New York Southern also. Cecilia and Kathleen, welcome. Thank you. We know it's not unusual to have bankruptcy courts to have multi-party cases. But now you've got new technology in the arena. So what we're interested in as one of the pilot courts for CMECF, the case management electronic case filing system, how has this changed what you're doing and another question also, how has it helped you to meet the challenges of multi-party cases? Third question, what about the numbers? Do the numbers really make a difference? Oh, absolutely Judy. In multiple party filings, numbers really do make a difference. 10 is more complicated than 5. 100 is more complicated than 10. 500 more complicated than 100. And of course as Kathy said earlier, 5,000 is really quite a bit more complicated than 500. In the electronic case filing arena, the attorneys are filing these complaints or adversary proceedings from their own offices via the internet. So in the future of dealing with these groupings in a different way, we have to do appropriate processes for each one. Each presents a unique challenge and hopefully opportunities. Right, exactly. So the numbers do make a difference. Kathleen, I know you have been involved every step of the way since you have implemented this system. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit talking with multi-parties, how does this system differ from band cap and nibs, the other bankruptcy case management systems? It does differ. In band caps and nibs you were able to call up that infamous at all at the end so you didn't have to enter all of the defendants up front and you could link the responses as they came in and you were allowed to do that. In ECF it's a little bit different. In ECF you have to enter all of the defendants up front. When the numbers, as Cecilia said, amount to 5,000 that gets to be a bit of a challenge so we had to develop a workaround to do that. Tell us a little bit more about this workaround. Was it a time savings, a cost savings? It was a challenge. It was a challenge. But we did work with the law firm that was filing the adversary that did have 5,000 defendants. I didn't make that up. And what we were able to do was come up with a system where they attached an alphabetical listing of defendants to the complaint when they filed it so that when you're looking for a specific defendant you just went to that letter of the alphabet and you just clicked on it and you were able to find it and link the response back up to it. So it seems to have worked out very, very well and it's easy to use which is an important factor in the electronic case filing. We want people to use the system and we want to make it as easy as possible. Now, your powers of persuasion to persuade the attorneys to enter all the names of defendants and creditors, how did you go about that? That is a bit of a challenge and we do work with them and we did convince them that in the long run it was to their own best interest to have everybody in up front and it seems to have worked out and the attorneys seem to be convinced that it is really in their own best interest. And they're complying well. And now you're 100% on I wouldn't say 100% but all the cases are 100%. Now, I know you've done many other things and we had talked about adding you're adding a summons form to your website. Could you tell us more? That was an important feature. At first we were allowing the attorneys to prepare their own summons. We found out that they were using very many different forms and it was creating a lot of editing work. So we developed a summons form that is out on the internet and available and we left lots of room for lots of defendants to be entered and we also put in there a notice of electronic filing so that the first response by the attorney will be filed electronically because they're notified up front with the summons that the case is being administered electronically. Very time efficient. It seems to be and it seems to be working very well. Now what happens? You're taking care of the firms that are on ECF very well. What happens if a firm is not able to file electronically? Right now there are a lot of firms that are not quite up to speed yet. We do work with them. We do a lot of hand holding and we tell them exactly what it is they need to get on board but up front we will accept the document on a disk in a word-to-word perfect format converted to PDF so no one can change it. We will work with them. We will give them access to our scanning facilities if the document is voluminous or they don't have the facilities to create it and either the court will scan it of course in the process the court will take care of all the process always and we will work with the attorneys and we'll give them access to our scanning equipment and let them do it. So the customer service is there for the attorneys and process. That's become a big part of our job is customer service for all of us. Absolutely. Now Cecilia judges I know you talk with them all the time and I know they've been involved every step of the way and we'd like to know how they feel about ECF with multi-party cases. What do they have to say? I think it's the same thing that we've learned from the attorneys and that's that they're able to track their cases and the judges calendar at any time day or night, any hour, anywhere so they keep a tight reign on what's happening in their case and that's one of the beauties of the electronic case filing system. They can find the status of the case. They can track the filing of answers. Multiple party filings as we've already began to listen to are best managed by keeping everything tightly scheduled including and very important is discovery. So the judges are finding that this is another tool in their tool belt just as the attorneys are to manage their cases and manage their docket. Sounds like it's very effective for them able to access day or night at their convenience. Absolutely. Which we all look for. Anything else the attorneys have said to you? I know you've used them in surveys continuously with implementing new technology. Is there anything they've said about CMECF? I think one of the things that they've said to us continually is how important it is now to their practice. Once they have it, once they have access to it, once they use it, they now come back to us and say almost don't know how we did it without it. They have instant documents. The other day we had a case filed and it is a multi-party case it's not multi-party in the sense that we've been talking about today we had 132 petitions filed within a very short period of time the judges and all the attorneys had access to all of those documents instant access and the complete case file. So satisfied attorneys and judges and court staff all working hard for the same goal current correct information. Right. We're very happy today that one of your colleagues is one of our push to talk courts. Pat Bruni who is the district pilot for one of the district pilots for CMECF and Pat are you there? Yes Judy we're here. Good afternoon to everyone. Good afternoon to you we're glad you could join us. Pat how has using CMECF with multi-party cases affected the workload of your staff? I think we've had an interesting experience on the district side of this prototype. Multi-party cases are actually a norm in the civil case realm. They're not all that unusual so many of the things we've heard previously still operate just the same. The high level of communication keeping all the parties involved and I would echo very much what Cecilia just told you that the advantage of CMECF is the instant information available to everyone. That does nothing but help the communication. Frankly we anticipated when we became part of the prototype that we would have problems with multi-party cases and remembering that we started this adventure in 1997 our anticipation was taking place before we actually saw the software. Once we saw the software began working with it and saw how straightforward the software was and how much it assisted the communication patterns. We can't frankly remember why we were anticipating trouble with multi-party cases. So you expected the worst failure for difficulties but the special challenges haven't appeared yet. No they haven't appeared yet. Actually it's impacted our workload a little bit in that we still have parties that are not able to file electronically. That's much like you heard the New York court describe. The impact that has on our staff it takes place when we're issuing orders from the court to the parties. If not everyone is electronic we know which are and which aren't so that adds a level of scrutiny during the quality assurance part and make sure that if a person is not able to electronically receive something from the court that we then follow up with a hard copy mailing. So it adds a quality assurance step and a mailing step but it's taken away so many steps with the instant information availability that I think overall staffing impact has been awash at this point. Pat at a conference we were at recently you mentioned to me that you were also looking at how your staff would be managing duties with multi-party cases and other areas in the future. Could you talk just a minute about that? Actually yes I'd be thrilled to talk about that. We have three deputies here in the western district of Missouri that are participating in the federal judicial centers federal court leadership project and they're doing it as a team which may be the first team experience that the leadership program has allowed. This particular team's assignment is they're obviously doing the work of the clerk. Their team assignment is to redesign job descriptions in the new ECF world. What will the federal court jobs look like when ECF is the norm as opposed to the prototype experience that we're having now. We hope that this will be very helpful in not only the western district of Missouri but we will as always share information across the country as we find out how this will go. Part of their project will be simply to talk with everyone and talk with the folks who have lived three years with us now in the prototype experience and find out how has their life changed. Sounds very good, very promising. We're delighted you're using our court leadership program to that purpose. That's what we hope for. Very practical work for the courts. We have a fax that has come in, Pat that affects you too. I could start with you, Pat. It says what advice do you have for courts just converting to CM ECF? I'm sorry Judy, how long is this program? We're in trouble. We have a lot of advice and most of it has to take the form of talk to your judges, talk to your bar, talk to your staff there's one consistent word you're hearing me say over and over and it's kind of the theme of your presentation today as well there's no substitute for open communication begin talking about what this might look like contact the prototype courts I'm sure Cecilia would entertain any sort of question as would we as would any of the other prototype courts but there's the best thing to do your existing business practices start talking with everyone involved about how they see life changing as you go through the implementation and don't be afraid of it. Thank you Pat. Kathleen and Cecilia would you like to add to that? I would like to echo Pat's communication is key. Talk to the bar association talk with the managing attorneys associations, talk with everybody talk with staff let them know what's coming down the road keep everybody involved from the very very beginning clean up your ICMS database it's very important especially with these multi-party cases it becomes critical. Cecilia? Same thing I think again Pat said it correctly the whole thing we've been talking about on multi-party and even with electronic case filing is communication communication communication jobs are changing technologies changing we have instant information so just communicate with everybody know what's happening let them know what's happening and talk with everybody. Good advice. I have one other fact that came in and please as Bob said please keep calling and sending facts this is for Kathleen a little bit more of a technical question how do you maintain an accurate electronic case status with multiple defendants since each defendant may be at a different stage in the case that is has not been served answer was filed and I think you started to address this. I did a little earlier that's an excellent question because that is a very difficult issue and as I said before in band cap you could just take the response and link it to the complaint when it was filed in ECF you need to have the defendant already in there so it becomes a little bit a little bit more cumbersome that you have to have the defendant in there already and what we've asked the attorneys to do it actually it comes a little neater though in electronic case filing because one attorney files for five defendants and it shows up very nicely so it makes it a little bit easier in the long run. Okay do we have any other questions out there from push to talk or any phone calls? Well this is Hal Jacobson I'm the operations manager of bankruptcy court in New York for example in keeping track of how could you turn your volume down just a little bit? Control the volume. Okay do the bit. Okay go ahead. We put the responsibility on the attorney to track who has filed an answer and who has not this is really in these large cases it's the responsibility of plaintiff's counsel to maintain the track the case administrator's role has changed he's an advisor a coach on how to use the system users are the ones who have to manage the engagement the other thing we realized is you have to look at the limits of the technology we could have put all 5,000 defendants on but we have a T1 line if you went to access the case even with a T1 line it would take quite a bit of time we realized that many of our filers don't have T1 lines they may not even have DSL they may be dealing with a 56K modem they'd get knocked off the line before they'd ever be able to access the case so they would never be able to look at it or file within it so one of the things you do need to do is to look at the limits of the technology rather than saying how much can we force speed in there just with the idea that we can get it on the balance has to be the fastest access for most of our users thank you Hal good points Kathleen, Cecilia, anything further to add to his comment I think one of the things that he brings up is very much on point and that is however long it basically takes you to put it in it will take you about that long to take it out so in these big party cases you want to make sure that your information is searchable in such a way that it doesn't keep you online the whole time good point I think that's about it for now then can I just add one more thing go ahead Hal one of the things about the Southern District of New York is we have a long history of having attorneys confer with us when there's anything unique or unusual so for example the case in which we had 5,000 defendants we had lead time to consider our options they didn't just show up on our doorstep and say we're ready to file we're ready to go just this recent filing of 130 petitions one of the simple things that we wanted to achieve was to have consecutive case numbers under the current capability with electronic case filing if the attorneys had filed online from their offices they could not have gotten consecutive numbers so we had them come down with disquets so that we could block out numbers so we could do a small task like that and when you consider previously under much less effective technology that was an easy task it's no longer that easy you have to think in terms of simple things like that rather than just going ahead and say well I'm going to file for my office nevertheless again good points and clarification Hal, thank you well that's about it for right now believe it or not it's just about time for a short break but we want to thank Cecilia we want to thank Kathleen and Pat Bruni in Kansas City, Missouri and Hal who just added some clarification please keep your facts coming we'll get to them as soon as we can we'll be back in 10 minutes but as we go to break we'll leave you with some of the challenges and effective practices from this first segment on preparing for trial I'm an evaluation form you've surely seen me before part of your materials and I perform a vital chore the information in me helps the center to take stock it helps them make their programs work to help you do your job please fill me in please fill me in we need this information please fill me in please fill me in we need to know the score please fill me in your feedback is important and if you don't complete this form we'll sing this song again your feedback is important please fill in the evaluation form available in your program materials or online on the jnet hi I'm michael bernie your host for court to court our mission is to provide education and information that will enhance your job what ongoing challenges do you face each day what innovative practices are other districts applying what makes your work satisfying we'll find these stories and share them with you we're excited about what's in store be sure to watch court to court on the fjtn check the fjtn bulletin or the jnet for broadcast dates and times substance abuse issues play a major part in supervising defendants and offenders now probation free trial services officers can get the latest information directly from national experts this is among the most complex phenomena facing our society today live on the fjtn the federal judicial center presents substance abuse a continuing education series which brings you the latest on research policy and strategies check the fjtn bulletin or the jnet for air dates of the next edition of this provocative series