The technology used in the practice of law and running the Courts has certainly changed in the quarter century I have been privileged to serve as a District Court judge. In 1988, there were no computers in the courthouse – or much of anywhere else, for that matter.
Typewriters and carbon paper were used instead of computer
printers and copy machines. Courier
services delivered documents to the Courthouse before fax machines were
available. The list of court cases was
handwritten out in a bound book: You’d
look up the case name alphabetically and then find out what the number was so
you could go to the files and find it.
Court Administrators would take telephone messages and write
them out on pink slips of paper – no voicemail then!
I traveled a lot as a judge then. In a typical week, I would go to three
different courthouses. Invariably, when
I had a break at a courthouse away from my office, I’d find the file I needed to
work on was back in Gaylord. I’d
normally have to wait till I got back to Sibley County
to get my telephone messages and open the envelopes to see what came in the
mail.
Hearings for people from our county that were subject to a
petition for commitment as mentally ill or chemically dependent were pretty
routinely held at the Willmar Regional Treatment Center. The judge, attorneys, court reporter and
social workers would routinely drive to Willmar
for these hearings. Often, these cases
would take less than a half hour, with about three and a half hours of travel
time.
My, how times have changed!
Now, we do hearings by interactive television, saving hours
of travel time. E-mail and voicemail
(and voicemail on my e-mail!) keep me in constant contact with the courthouses
I serve. Instead of couriers or even faxes,
scanners now allow documents to be sent instantaneously by e-mail. The Court records are on a computer system
and documents have been scanned and are available to us on the network.
All of these technological changes have made judges more
efficient and able to handle the larger number of cases we are required to
handle these days. But no matter how
much more efficient we become because of technological improvements, our most
important work is done in the courtroom, where we deal every day with real people
and the most significant issues of their lives.
* *
* * *
Next week: Dress Code
