 Coming up on Court to Court. For the clerk's office, it's been an amazing morale booster, simply because it was their idea in the beginning. But before the treason issue could be taken up, Burke confronted Marshall with another constitutional question, a test of the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary. We're reaching out to the community and opening up this building so that they can come in and see that it's a living building. This is Court to Court. Your connection to what's happening in the federal courts around the country, providing information and ideas that will enhance your job and how the courts function. Now with today's program, Michael Burney. Welcome to Court to Court, the educational magazine program of the Federal Judicial Center for all court employees. Today we'll learn about the success of telecommuting at one clerk of court's office. We'll hear another moment in court history, and we'll see how a district court promotes community outreach. Telecommuting is an alternative workplace option available to a growing number of court employees, especially as more and more work becomes electronic. Flexible and compressed work schedules involve when you work. Telecommuting involves where you work and it challenges assumptions about the nature of work and of home for that matter. We visited the district and bankruptcy courts combined clerk's office for the western district of Missouri to learn about its experiences with telecommuting. I just love it. I think it works out great. I love it. It's been very beneficial. Once you get used to it, you'll love it. The biggest surprise to me is how much work I get done when I telecommute. For the clerk's office, it's been an amazing morale booster, simply because it was their idea in the beginning. It was an exercise where staff were actually broken into small groups and asked to draw a picture of how they saw their future with the court. To a person, every group pictured themselves home, working at home. I telecommute every Wednesday. My son stays at the babysitters. It's not very far away from my home, so I'm able to go and have lunch with him and then come back also to my home to finish my day. The clerk's office expects employees not to use telecommuting in place of a babysitter, but will make as needed exceptions. If I do need to stay home with a sick child, then that gives me the ability to do so and not to miss work at the same time. I decided to participate mainly because it gives me flexibility with my time and frees up some time, especially since I'm getting ready to move and I'll be further away from work. Employees can work at home up to 10 hours in each two-week pay period. Many who participate use most of the time in a single day. I do it a little bit differently than some of my co-workers. I tend to do a little bit each night. I'll work maybe an hour, an hour and a half. Reasons for telecommuting often involve family obligations. Hey, Mom, will you sign my planner, please? When Kathy Popejoy's family moved, they no longer lived in the district of the school in which they wanted to keep her daughter, which meant no bus service. Okay, y'all ready to go? We gotta wait for you soon. Since school doesn't start until 9.25 in the morning, I needed to telecommute in order to work from home and then go in later after I could take her to school. And then if my two little ones get up, they usually bring their toys and sit right in here in the study on the floor. The three mornings a week she telecommutes and goes to the court later. Popejoy's husband teaches at a nearby university. The other two days he works from home and so takes the children to their respective destinations. And she goes in early. While telecommuting is ideal for staff who primarily work with electronic information, one courtroom deputy for an Article III judge also telecommutes. The United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri is now in session. The Honorable Nanette K. Lowry presiding. She says for telecommuting to work successfully, the judge and courtroom deputy must plan carefully. I am fortunate to work for a judge that sets her calendar once her calendar is set in a compact manner. We will put our hearings, phone conferences, and things of that nature into clumps. We will fill days up solid. We will not set just one hearing in an afternoon. We will set four or five so that we will have more open blocks of time which permits telecommuting. To ensure that the bar in public can reach her when she's telecommuting, Denise forwards her office phone to either her home or cell phone. Not everyone telecommutes a set number of hours or on specific days. For us, it's really helpful because we're allowed to work from home on an as-needed basis, so I probably in a month's time, maybe at the max, would do 16 hours. All staff, including part-time staff, are eligible to participate. It doesn't have to be an electronic job. It can be a project-based assignment that maybe they want to go home for two days for the next two weeks to get a particular project done. We do have a few supervisors who are telecommuting and what they primarily work on are special projects. For example, one of the supervisors is updating the dictionary events for version 2 of ECF, so that's a perfect thing for her to do at home. Bruni says that when they initially discussed implementing telecommuting, one of the hurdles to overcome was... Getting managers to trust that employees would still be working even when we weren't directly watching them work. I just noticed that we got this claim then from Wells Fargo and it's in paper form. I think the scariest part for anyone is wondering, how is this going to affect my job? If all my employees are out working at home, do you really need me? And so we had to stretch the managers and make them understand that there are other ways to measure the work, that we needed to measure the process and the output as opposed to seeing someone physically in their chair. We asked them on their timesheet, which is an Excel spreadsheet, to go ahead and notate the TC and what they were working on. There really are no problems keeping track of the time. I just have to be a little more diligent than what we used to be. Along with that timesheet is they would turn in a transaction report and this is a report that's very easily accessed by ECF. And I can go through and notate, yes indeed, from 10 o'clock at night until perhaps 11 o'clock in the evening, Patrick really was working on claims. The key is going to be trust, but you still must assume, I think rightfully so, that you're dealing with an adult professional population and they're going to do it well and they're going to do it right. And employees appreciate the fact that we are offering a perk that many private sectors offer. So I think morale has picked up. That I really have found that when I am home, even if I have a sick kid at home, I actually can get a lot done. That's what they were planning on, that was their intent. Rooney says telecommuting is not for everyone, especially those for whom work is a social experience. Probably half of the people that we originally approved are still involved in the program because once the noob wears off, then you find out who really wants to perform in that way and for whom does it really work well. A few problems that telecommuting causes generally involve the speed of dial-up internet service. It's something that you get used to, but in the beginning it was frustrating because you're used to fast screens moving and there is three to five second lag between screens. Every now and then we do have problems getting connected to the network from home. I will call the helpline, and usually within five to 15 minutes they will call me back and have the problem fixed. To telecommute, staff must have their own internet service provider at home. Brief training is also required. I'll share a little bit more about why transferring files maybe to your local drive at home may make things work a little bit more efficiently for you. It's not so much about the policy because we've left that up to the supervisor, but it's more just an opportunity to look at how the connection takes place, the software, how things just look a little bit different. When you dial in from home, do you need to always click on that advanced button to double-check the server you're connected to? I would recommend that you do, if you click advanced and you see and it just drops the menu down and you see your server is already identified there, you can go ahead and log in at that point. Employees are certainly welcome to check out and use court equipment, and if you are using a court computer at home, the court will maintain it. On the flip side, if you're using your own computer, it's your responsibility to maintain it. But court system staff make sure that home computers have the necessary virus and firewall protection. The clerk's office makes clear that telecommuting is not an entitlement. There's a comprehensive written policy adapted from the administrative office's guidelines. There are a checklist, a work schedule, and an agreement which is signed by employees and supervisors. One of the rules and one of the criteria to be eligible is that the work in your group area is covered adequately. That has to be a decision by a frontline supervisor. The routine logistics of running an office are also accommodated. There are certain days that are called full attendance days where no one will telecommute and that drives the scheduling of staff meetings and that sort of thing. This level of detail was worked out during extensive staff discussions prior to implementing the policy. A successful telecommuting policy is going to include a number of things. The first and the most important is an open communication between all employees. Make sure that you've pulled out all those little hidden places where it could go bad for your particular unit and listen to your staff. They will tell you if it's going to work or not with how they respond. Ask for employees' input on what kind of things that they want to see. Ask for managers' input on what the outcomes you're expecting your employees to do when they do take work home. Set ground rules at the beginning so that they know what's expected. I think is the easiest thing so that there's no surprises later. To me, the telecommuting is a natural add-on to the whole electronic environment that the courts find themselves in now. The work is invisible. It truly can happen from anywhere. It truly can go anywhere. The challenge is for management to move into the 21st century and they're thinking about how they handle their staff, how they work with folks. As we researched this topic, it became clear that the telecommuting experience is influenced by an office's culture and size. For example, some offices adopt telecommuting because there's not enough space for everyone. In other offices, managers think that telecommuting increases productivity. For example, people can complete detailed reports more quickly without office distractions. Whatever the case, the most important factor in a successful policy is good communication between staff and management. In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied for president in the Electoral College so it fell to the House of Representatives It took 36 ballots to elect Jefferson President and Burr Vice President. The rivalry between these two ambitious men reached its peak in 1807 when Jefferson, then in his second term, had the former Vice President arrested and tried for treason. Here with that extraordinary moment in court history is my colleague Bob Fagan. You may remember Aaron Burr as the man who killed Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first secretary of the treasury in a duel. But that infamous event was only one of Burr's escapades. The 1804 duel with Hamilton signaled the end of Burr's political future in the East after his term as Vice President. But he saw opportunity in the West and plotted conquest with an old friend, General James Wilkinson, Governor of the New Louisiana Territory. How Burr hoped to establish his own base of power in the West remains a mystery. His supporters said he planned to capture Mexico and other Spanish possessions. But his enemies insisted he wanted to sever the western states and territories from the United States. In 1806 Burr wrote a coded letter to Wilkinson telling him that with several hundred men he would meet Wilkinson in early December. With rumors of insurrection threatening to implicate him Wilkinson betrayed his friend. He sent the deciphered letter to Jefferson. Burr was arrested in March 1807 and brought to Richmond, Virginia for trial in the U.S. Circuit Court. Held in the state Capitol building the trial was one of the great public events of the time. Presiding over the trial as circuit judge was Jefferson's estranged cousin Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall, a federalist and Jefferson, leader of the Democratic Republicans had long been antagonists each determined to shape the young republic according to his own political beliefs. The grand jury returned an indictment against Burr for treason. This charge raised a constitutional issue because treason is only crime defined in the Constitution. It states treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies giving them aid and comfort. But before the treason issue could be taken up Burr confronted Marshall with another constitutional question a test of the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary. Burr asked the court to issue a subpoena directing President Jefferson to appear at the trial and bring with him the deciphered Wilkinson letter and other papers. Jefferson's lawyers argued his claim of executive privilege contending that the court had no power to subpoena the president to turn over documents. Relying on the Sixth Amendment Marshall ruled that the subpoena could be issued to Jefferson but the law does not discriminate between the president and a private citizen. He conceded though that the president's duties to the nation might sometimes afford him an exemption from compliance. Marshall's decision established the principles of presidential accountability to the judiciary that were applied 167 years later in the Watergate case. The parties then turned the prosecution planned to call 140 witnesses to testify to Burr's reasonable intentions and actions but after only a dozen had testified Burr moved to exclude the testimony of all witnesses as irrelevant because none of them could testify about the overt act stated in the indictment that Burr had levied war against the United States on Blenner-Hassett's island. The prosecution had already admitted that Burr was not among the 30 or so men assembled on the island. Council for both sides spent days in heated debate. At last, on August 31st, Chief Justice Marshall delivered his opinion addressing how treason was to be defined and proved. Marshall doubted that Burr could be convicted simply for procuring the men who gathered on the island. Even if he could be Burr was not charged with procuring treason and Marshall wrote that he could only be convicted on proof of the overt acts which are charged. And the Constitution mandated that the overt act must be proved by two witnesses but there were no witnesses who could offer such proof. Thus Marshall instructed the jury that all the testimony was inadmissible with no relevant evidence to consider the jury returned its verdict in 20 minutes. The defendant, it said, is not proved to be guilty by any evidence submitted to us. The bitterness between Marshall and the Jeffersonians only increased after the decision. Republican newspapers called for Marshall's impeachment and there were threats of an amendment to allow removal of judges in both houses of Congress. In private, Jefferson railed that it now appears we have no law but the will of the judge. Only the spreading Napoleonic wars abroad which occupied Jefferson's attention brought an end to the furor. Burr, hounded by mobs and creditors fled to Europe. He returned to New York in 1812 and practiced law there until he died at age in 1836. Before he died that year Texas won independence from Mexico and Burr was said to have exclaimed, I was only 30 years too soon. What was treason in me 30 years ago is patriotism today. That's a moment in court history. I'll be back with another in a future court to court. Outreach to the public is handled in different ways by different courts. The best depends partly on what resources are available. Sometimes the community itself provides some of the resources and the court serves as the venue. That's the situation at the district court for the district of Nevada in Las Vegas. A federal court can be a bit intimidating I think to people generally. I think once they've been to the building they've seen that it's a building that involves itself and what some may consider the sterile law. This facility is so beautiful and had we not come to these performances we never would have seen it. These performances are the downtown cultural series sponsored by the city of Las Vegas and held in the federal courthouse. And before we even come in here we take a moment to stand outside and admire the architecture. It's really beautiful. District Court Judge Lloyd George is understandably proud of this courthouse in which he sees powerful symbolism. To me that pillar represents the rule of law holding stable and aloft a society and the two wings that we have are an open arm to the open arms to the city welcoming people. A real value of public outreach by the courts to the community is one of having members of the community come in here for something other than jury duty or something other than to watch a trial or a trial they're involved in. They realize that this is a community building. Courthouses historically were the center of communities throughout America and that's changed a lot as we've grown so large and with our suburban communities and the like. The downtown cultural series is a joint effort by the court and the city of Las Vegas. On the third Friday of each month the court hosts local performers in the jury assembly room. The city government's cultural affairs division schedules the performers and speakers and hires a caterer to provide a light lunch at these noon events. I don't think it's a chance to bring people downtown bring them together from all walks of life and let them have a little dialogue some time together and that's a very positive experience for everyone. I think the program is both educational and informative and entertaining. Events have included the Nevada Ballet Theatre, Bluegrass Music a classical guitarist historical lecturers and singers called the Tenors Three. Today it's Hot Lava a Polynesian dance troupe. Several of its members were delayed in traffic but MC Rooney Tafiaga kept the crowd amused and imparted some little-known knowledge. The word for this instrument is called Ukulele. It's made up of two words. The first word is uku. In the island uku means flea and lele means jumping or flight. So people ask me sometimes why do you call there the jumping flea? Well, it's very simple. We had your name for it and when we saw how they played it it looked like a dog scratching its dog. The patient audience included a school class on a field trip. So what are you expecting today? I'm expecting thrilling and feeling and fun moments. These monthly performances aren't the only cultural showcase. About two years ago, the court began displaying works by local artists in the Rotunda. Well, it's a beautiful space. It was a little bit bare. It's added wonderful color and another bit of culture to the building. And about once every six weeks we have a different artist coming in and putting up their work. Could you look at the artwork outside? Yes, fascinating. I thought it was really pretty the way that they put all the colors together to make it look really neat. Clark of Court Wilson says artwork is scheduled for the next year and a half and that he gets calls every month from two or three artists asking to participate. Despite its proximity, the more famous Las Vegas strip is not part of the city of Las Vegas. And the city's popular mayor, Oscar Goodman, is the downtown area's biggest booster. He's frequently in the audience for these programs. It's wonderful because of the fact that it brings in a cross-section of folks who work in the downtown, who are interested in culture, who are interested in expanding their knowledge and their horizons. It's just a plus-plus for the community. One of the values in partnering with the city, with the cultural series, is the obvious positive relationship that builds with the city. The city gave us the land for this building at no charge. And ever since then, the court's been committed to wanting to partner with the city and make this more of a cultural center rather than just a courthouse. The city has done more than I have. The concept was mine in the main. But they have taken the program. They have furnished food. They get the entertainers. Whatever expenditure there is, is well worth it because of the fact that so many people get to enjoy it. First of all a facility like this would put on these kinds of cultural events. It is impressive. We're retired and they're very nice cultural events. This is the third one we've been to and it's free. How can you beat that? I think that it brings people to the federal courthouse that may never have a reason to ever come here. I think it makes the public feel like it's more their building and not just another government building. Well, I think it's nice for the employees because it's something different and I think it's also nice for the community. It shows the community that the federal courthouse is not just for legal matters, but it's open for a variety of purposes. It cannot be too hard because it's a hardwood and it sounds stupid just like that. And it cannot be too soft because if you're soft then it doesn't make any noise. Whoever thought you could have fun in a federal courthouse, huh? You did. Well, I think it's a great way to spend your lunch hour with your family and your friends and your colleagues and to have an opportunity to experience the talent and the artistic performances of our local artists. Because of the problem with traffic, not all of the troops performers made it to the event. But that didn't keep the audience from enjoying a variety of island dancing. I associate courthouses with during duty and this is a nice move to use the facility and bring people together. Also very surprised that they serve a little refreshment, which we did not expect. So that was an added bonus. We saw the ballet and we saw the tenors and it's just great to have a cultural thing in this city. A New Zealand war dance dramatically changed the tempo. It doesn't mean anything. We don't throw away like a spear because if we throw this thing as a spear and we miss then we'll run real fast. Partnerships such as this don't just happen. Clerk of Court Wilson has advised on how to get started if a court were interested in a similar effort. I think the first thing is to reach out to the city or the county and determine if they have a cultural department, a leisure department because most cities are doing something like this in their own communities already and looking for a venue. Obviously the judges have to be supportive of a cultural series and I think it's always good for a judge to make the contact with the local government. I'm kind of an optimistic guy. The cooperation and the mutual interest in making it work. The marvelous help that has been given to us by the city has just been enthusiastic but it is a unique connecting link with the balance of the community that I think has improved community relations. We're very, very pleased and happy with it. I thought it was very entertaining. Our next Court to Court program will feature another Court's outreach effort, one involving courthouse tours with presentations by representatives from various units. We'll also learn how one clerk's office handled unexpected problems when it converted to CMECF and we'll find out what is emotional intelligence. We want to hear your reaction to our program and get your ideas on the topics we should cover. Please fill out an evaluation of today's program. You can find it at our website at the address on the screen. Click on FJC Broadcasts on the FJTN and then click on Court to Court to select and print the evaluation form. Please mail or fax it to us. Our fax number is 202-502-4088. For all of us at the Federal Judicial Center thanks for watching.