Pelican attorneys and paralegals? Where can I learn about legal docketing?
 

I am working in a docket control application and I want to understand the nuts and bolts of docketing - specifically how the legal scheduling rules work and where they are publically available (I assume every legal rule must be publically available, right?).

What he said. You have to go state by state, and court by court within each state. You will see patterns emerge, but every court has its own rules and its own quirks.

They teach an entire year on this in law school, it's called "civil procedure."

Thanks, I believe you both grasp the scope of the task in front of me. First, I guess I need to understand how docketing works. Like how do I even determine what the relevant criteria are? I assume it must be driven by dates. But I don't even know how to figure out which dates are relevent for a given type of matter. And somewhere in there I assume the docket schedule for a given matter will have to change based on new events(?)...but I have no idea what those events might be or how to fit them in to the whole process.

So you guys hit the nail on the head. The deeper I look into this well, the farther down it goes. Is there anywhere I can go to get a layman's overview of the process?

I have a good legal background, am in IT now, and have implemented a rules-based docketing system (Litigation). What program are you implementing? Prolaw and Compulaw are two of the common apps for litigation docketing. PATTSY is utilized for Patent and Trademark docketing. I even developed basic rules for Appellate docketing (there were little in the way of rules at that time for local appellate courts).

Edit: BTW, no, not every legal rule is available edit *electronically, in a rules-based format*. There are different sets of rules for each state, federal, and local jurisdictions.

I fully understand the process, mechanics and all, of what a docket department does. I can help you.

Do you have yahoo or something?

SoCal, I don't think he's asking how to build the rules (attorneys need to look at the rules of civil procedure for each jurisdiction for that). I think he wants an overview of the concept behind it.

What are you trying to accomplish with your docketing project? "Docketing" is a broad term that can be used to mean anything from keeping a calendar that tracks dates and deadlines on individual files to what the court does to keep track of the litigation that is filed with it. If you describe what you're trying to accomplish, or what problem you are trying to solve, I'm sure you'll get some good advice here.

CC makes a good point that docketing federal administrative proceedings (e.g., patent prosecution) is conceptually different from proceedings established under U.S. Const. Art. III (Federal Courts), and that the same docketing program generally cannot handle both kinds of proceedings.

As to the rules of practice themselves, federal and state courts generally get to make their own rules, but with some exceptions. For example, New York legislates its statutes of limitations and sets them very short for Art. 78 proceedings (civil actions against state and local government). This is a minefield for docketing, and is a fertile source of legal malpractice litigation. The New York Law Journal will give you a good idea of what's involved in a complicated jurisdiction since it publishes things like motion return dates for NY city and state courts. I think it also publishes calendars for SDNY, and 2d circuit. You might start there and then work backwards to compare actual dates with court rules you can find to see if it makes any sense.

Patent prosecution is a good example of an administrative proceeding. While the patent rules are published (37 CFR), they are not published with court rules since the patent office is an executive function established under Article II not under Article III (Judicial). Even though the rules are published, there are some limitations set by statutes (e.g., maximum time available for an appellant to appeal an adverse patent office determination). These times are in 35 USC--laws passed by Congress. A good patent docketing system (IPSS, MDC, etc.) will take this into account. This interaction between court rules, administrative rules, and congressional laws is not unique to patent law. You also see it with tax law, communications law, etc.

Gerry

Wow, this BBS never ceases to amaze me. I feel like I can ask ANYTHING and get well-informed answers. I can't thank you all enough for coming to my rescue on this topic.

I guess I should have given more details in my first post. At the time, I was only beginning to grasp the complexity of the issue I am faced with and typed out my question without sufficient background. Basically, I am upgrading an existing estate trust management application used by some local law offices and I will need to include docket control for the various trust accounts. It already does some basic docket control stuff, but the calculations and relevent dates are hard coded in the system. That works fine for one jurisdiction and type of legal matter, but my mandate is to upgrade the system to be flexible so it can be used for many jurisdictions and matters.

Of course, as you've realized, when I started researching the topic, I quickly got overwhelmed. My head is spinning. I had assumed (apparently incorrectly) that this stuff would all be easily accessible on the internet. But as you all have pointed out, it seems more like a freaking maze hidden inside a rubik's cude with all six sides painted black.

So that is where I stand...I'm just a computer programmer holding his head in his hands thinking "WTF have I stepped into?" So I'll take all the advice I can get.

Cool_chick, I don't have yahoo. I can be reached via PM here on Pelican or via my personal website at...

JanusCole@fasterfasterfaster.com

Phew...okay, so I am taking a total SWAG at modeling this beast...I figure docket rules are driven by legal matters and their events. Every legal matter has events associated with it (otherwise the lawyers would have nothing to bill for ;)). In the case of an estate trust, it could be the death of the creator of a trust. From that date, various other events are required to happen (forms filed, taxes paid). The point of a docket control system (if I understand this all correctly), is to calculate what and when those events are and remind the responsible people of them using some sort of calendar system. Those generated events may also then trigger new events in a cascading process. Plus, I assume new events can happen (or be scheduled to happen as in the case of a trial) which would then be thrown into the mix.

So my current SWAG model involves a database of Legal Matters, each of which has associated Events (past, present, and future), all of which are used to populate a calendar and which can, in turn, generate more (future) Events. There would also be a Rules database, each rule defining one new Event based on adding or subtracting days from an existing Event.

Whoah...okay...I think I just needed to think that through...obviously I need to somehow account for holidays and weekends...and also make each rule specific to a jurisdiction...but aside from that, am I missing anything obvious?

Janus, I think you got it. But, if it were me, I would be going back to the project manager and requiring them to give you the events to hardcode and the needed calculation for each event.

There is no way in hell you should be expected to figure out the events and calculations. They need to get a lawyer to tell you what events to calculate and what timeframe rules the calculation should adhere to.

I know little about trust and estates. However, SoCal is right on the money with this statement:

..........if the application isn't 100% accurate and reliable, it is of very limited use (in fact, is dangerous).



Dangerous.





Do they expect you to figure out these events? Many jurisdictions for many matters? That sounds like a hell of a lot of hardcoding to me.

Again, I don't know trust and estates (I believe that always under federal jurisdiction, right attorneys?), if the rules of procedure remain static, it would seem worth it to hardcode, but with litigation, they may change. As such, the products that can be purchased have a feature to "update" the ruleset (ruleset updates are researched by attorneys hired by the software vendor).

You need to go back to that project manager and ask them to give you this information to hardcode.....

Project manager? Oh cc, in a perfect world, I'd have a project manager and a team of analysts. But I am on my own with this one.

What you and the rest of the Pelicans have taught me, however, is that I'll need to leave it to the attorneys to determine what the rules are for each condition. In my naive, "small d" democratic mindset, I had assumed that this was all publically available. But now I see it is instead kept (perhaps intentionally?) obscure and that companies like Compulaw are charging a premium for info that I had assumed was/should be freely provided by the courts.

But that still leaves me with the task of designing a database scheme that can properly store a set of docketing rules. My simple design discussed above in which each matter event generates new events set a specified number of days away may be a workable start. The rules would be expressed in this form...

Event XYZ is to be scheduled 999 days from ABC
Event DEF is to be scheduled 999 days from ABC
Event JKL is to be scheduled 999 days from XYC

Some could even be implicitly recurring...

Event JKL is to be scheduled 90 days from JKL

If that basic design could be used to model all of the docketing rules for a given jurisdiction, then I can hand it off to the legal firms and tell them they need to fill in the data.

You have the basic concepts down, but the trigger dates are still set by the local rules, or state rules.

For example, in the estate context, you likely have letters of administration entered on date x, then a state tax return due on date x+, then a federal tax return on x++, then a final report and accounting due on x+++. Trust reporting is similar. There are "discount" dates to account for as well.

The problem is that the "events' might well vary by local rule and practice, so you'll need client imput.