Are Virtual Courts Here to Stay

Tyler Podcast Episode 43, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

On January 1, 2020, the idea of a virtual court was almost science fiction for most municipal court administrators, but by April nearly every court in the country had set up some sort of remote hearing option in response to the pandemic. As social distancing requirements ease, is there still a need for this type of technology? According to subject matter experts Jonathan Lang and Marlin Jones, the answer is yes. Besides the challenges the pandemic created, finding childcare, reliable transportation, or even taking time off of work are some of the many challenges people face when seeking justice. Episode 43 looks at how virtual court platforms that offer more than just video conferencing are being used to solve this problem and creating a better solution for communities, constituents, and courts.

Transcript

Jonathan Lang: This is beneficial outside of a pandemic situation. This benefits your defendants, it benefits your court, it helps you save time, and then just expanding the footprint of the clients that we have that can take advantage of the solution.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we talk about issues facing communities today and highlight the people, places, and technology making a difference. I'm Jeff Harrell. I'm the director of content marketing for Tyler and I'm so glad that you joined me. Well, here's the problem we are addressing in today's episode, how do you provide access to justice when appearing in court is difficult? Now, besides the challenges of the pandemic, finding childcare, finding reliable transportation, or even the ability to take off work are some of the many challenges people face. Well, today we look at how technology is being used to solve this problem and create a better solution for both communities and its constituents.

Jeff Harrell: Well, to help us dig into how virtual court is helping solve this access to justice problem, we chat with two subject matter experts here at Tyler Technologies. Jonathan Lang is the product manager for the Incode Court Suite, and he is responsible for the overall direction and development of the products and services that Tyler provides to municipal courts across the country. Marlin Jones, Marlin is the product owner for Incode Court Products. In this role, she works with clients to identify and address business problems through the development of new software solutions. She's also responsible for providing support with the direction of assigned products. I think you're going to really enjoy this episode as we dig in deeper on virtual court. Here's my conversation with Jonathan and Marlin. Jonathan and Marlin, welcome to the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Jonathan Lang: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Marlin Jones: Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having us excited to talk about virtual court.

What is a virtual court?

Jeff Harrell: Jonathan, I'd love to start with you. Let us know, what is virtual court?

Jonathan Lang: Happy to be here today and to talking about it. Virtual court basically provides a turnkey platform for conducting face-to-face court sessions over the web. We use that with our clients that are using our Incode Court case management system, and they use the virtual court platform to connect with defendants that are remote for any reason. Interestingly, we started working on this solution back in 2019, pre-COVID. We had seen out in the industry that we saw some of our clients and some other people in the industry starting to go down this road of trying to provide a virtual court experience for people. But we noticed that they were having to cobble together a lot of different solutions in order to make that work. They were using a meeting platform, they were using document platform. They were just emailing by hand to get people invited to and incorporated into the sessions. It was just a lot of manual work that we saw that people were going through, so we started thinking about, "How could we potentially solve this better? How could we solve this problem?" Physical appearance in court is inconvenient at best. If you've ever had a ticket and had to travel downtown and try to get that taken care of, it's never convenient. Occasionally, it's just impossible because sometimes you have college students that live states away from the court, and to come back to the court to take care of a traffic ticket is a big deal.

Jonathan Lang: Naturally, all of this was pre-COVID, so once the pandemic hit, this became a whole lot more important and a whole lot more real to our clients and something that was urgent to them, but that was really what we were after, how do we solve that problem, and not just create another meeting platform, but how do we marry that with the information we have in our court systems, the case information, the balance due the documents that are associated with the case? How do we help them in that virtual hearing, try to get that case fully resolved in one sitting so that they can talk about the case, they can check in for court, they can share documents back and forth, they can disposition the case, whatever next step it needs to go to, and then actually be able to click to pay the amount due, and just get it all done in one sitting instead of multiple steps? That's what we were looking to try to solve and that's what virtual court is today. It's an ability to not only have that web conference and chat with the defendant, but also to be looking at the same sheet of paper in terms of the case information and the documents associated with it and try to really drive to a resolution so that those people don't have to physically come into court.

Jeff Harrell: I was going to ask you that, 'cause I think you mentioned it was 2019, because I wondered, was this something that was a result of the pandemic? Sounds like you were working right before that, but did the pandemic accelerate the technology and accelerate the offering?

Jonathan Lang: It really did. Most of all, it accelerated our timeframe a little bit because we worked on this all through the course of 2019 and we had been working with a focus group of clients to work through what does it need to do? What does it not need to do? What's beneficial? What could be left to the side? What could be backburnered for later, et cetera? As we worked through the course of that, we were preparing for a release of virtual court in April of 2020 at our Tyler Connect Conference.

Jeff Harrell: Wow.

Jonathan Lang: As we got about midway through March, that's when everything happened. Everything shut down, the conference got canceled, everything started getting locked down, everybody started working from home. It was at that point in time that we looked and said, "Well, here's a product we were going to launch in about six weeks that seems to be tailor-made for this situation. Let's go ahead and launch it now," and so mid-March, we went ahead and launched and let everybody know all of our clients know that we had a solution. We offered a 90-day free trial for people to be able to jump on board and to try it out, to make sure it fit what they needed to do, and then to be able to continue to use it, and so we saw a lot of success during that pandemic time, when all that started kicking off of people being able to utilize virtual court to get over the hump and keep their courts going as everything else was shutting down and try to keep up with their work and keep cases moving along.

Jeff Harrell: Do you feel like the pandemic was an accelerator on the client side of accepting the solution? 'Cause all of a sudden, they had a need, right, to be able to meet virtually. Did that accelerate the client acceptance of the solution?

Jonathan Lang: It definitely did. A lot less work related to trying to explain what in the world it was 'cause everybody was looking for a solution at that point in time. A lot of solutions flying about, a lot of people trying to cobble something together. We just felt fortunate that we had the right thing at the right time when the pandemic hit. A lot of people, it accelerated their interests. We had a lot of people reaching out to us when we announced it saying, "I'm interested in knowing more, tell me more," quite a few of them getting signed up and taking it out for a spin and moving it along and using it to actually help resolve their cases as everything shut down.

Technology Leading to Success

Jeff Harrell: From a technology standpoint, is cloud really is the key technology driver there? Or what's the technology that allows us to really happen?

Jonathan Lang: A couple of key pieces of technology or key partners that we partnered with for the technology, one Amazon Web Services. The virtual court solution is fully hosted in Amazon Web Services and available there as the foundation of making everything go. Then we also partnered with Twilio to solve the video conferencing and the chat problem as far as being able to, instead of building a whole new thing of our own, partnering with someone who does that all day long in a lot of different situations, and so a couple of key partners that we had there so that we could really focus on the user experience and we could really focus in on, what does it look like? How does it feel to the users to actually use this? What problems do we need to solve beyond just the web conference and the chat? Because as you know, there's a lot of tools out there that help you do that. Providing them with a check-in process that when people are scheduled for court, that they walk through a check-in process, and they acknowledge the rules and they watch a little video telling them what to expect, and they're able to upload documents that they want the judge to see, whether it's an insurance card, or a copy of their driver's license, or a receipt saying they got something taken care of, being able to really address the user experience around it, as opposed to the technical challenges was essential.

Jonathan Lang: Being able to link that in with our court case management system, so when somebody gets scheduled for a session in our court system, it automatically sends them that invitation. They don't have to go to another step to send them an invitation and make sure they show up. It automatically does that for them. Then recording that back to the court case management system that they attended, that they checked in, that something was discussed and changed. It records all that back to the case history and any of the documents that are uploaded are downloaded into the court case management system and into our document management system so everything ends up in one spot at the end.

Virtual Court and Small Communities

Jeff Harrell: Marlin, I'd love to ask you, I know you work with, with clients of all sizes, the virtual court solution, how have you seen it help some of our smaller communities?

Marlin Jones: Absolutely, yeah. Before I answer that question, I'll mention that one of the biggest things that we've really accomplished as well is virtual court is a very tight-knit community, so we work really hands-on, really closely with a lot of our courts, from what we released back in March to where we are today has really been a user-based design. The clients have had significant feedback and a lot of the responses that we received from just some of the smaller quotes that I've heard from in this instance that just going to really read just the exact quote that I received from a customer. It just tells their story and I couldn't have told it better myself. He said, "Virtual court has opened a world of options that didn't exist before. In the past we were rigidly stuck with in-person appearances. These packed the courtroom. They also created hardships for defendants, which hit certain defendants harder than others." This is especially true for defendants in lower socioeconomic situations. In an example, a defendant that lives hours away needed to resolve a suspended license in an example, and they didn't have the money to come back to the court, they probably didn't have a dependable car to make it all of that way, and they probably didn't have a job that they could really take that extra time off to be gone for a half a day or a day in that instance. With virtual court, those folks only had to really step away while on break at their job, so they're not even having to leave their job and go somewhere. We've seen people sitting in the break room, attending virtual court, so for smaller courts, where it's not easy for them to get to that access, virtual court has brought that access to those defendants.

Jeff Harrell: I think it's easy to go, "Well, it's great because of the pandemic where we can't get together physically," but as you've just pointed out, it's actually great for people who can't get to the court for some reason, don't have the transportation, the childcare, they've got a job they need to be at, so it really gives access to people beyond what we might think of the pandemic causing it.

Marlin Jones: Yes. Absolutely, Jeff. When we started this, like Jonathan mentioned early on, when we started writing our use cases, pandemic was not on the list of things. I remember looking and doing some additional research and saw a couple of things about pandemics and I thought, "Eh, who needs that?," just totally disregarded that part, and little did we know that would be at the top of our list for a use case, so I laugh now, but who knew? Who knew?

Jeff Harrell: Yeah, I remember in college, I was going through a town, and I was probably speeding, and get pulled over for a ticket, but I don't really probably think about the ticket, or want to address it. Does it help with those sorts of situations? 'Cause I couldn't imagine a small community like that, those things start to build up, clog up the court system. Does this help alleviate that sort of thing.

Marlin Jones: Yes. Absolutely. We've got courts a lot of the way like that. New Braunfels, Texas, different places along that way that have a lot of college students that are transient back and forth, and that's exactly what we thought virtual court would be used for. I think one of the biggest things that we, what some of our developers quickly developed after the pandemic was adding separate what we call locations and rooms. That meant that meeting with the prosecutors, meeting with defense attorneys, or anything along that line, you had the opportunity to have separate rooms and locations, so that took into consideration some of the juveniles, or maybe a parent wants to come along with a college student, or anything like that, and they may be in two different locations, so we set it up to where both of those parties can come together, and if they want to talk to just the prosecutor solely by themselves, they have the liberty to do so as opposed to just coming in, and immediately meeting with the judge, so definitely, we've taken that into your perspective.

Virtual Court and Large Communities

Jeff Harrell: Well, what about some of our larger communities that we work with? How does virtual court benefit them?

Marlin Jones: What's happened there is that we've got a couple of... I'll speak specifically about a judge that we have in Texas and he is adamant. When you hear him speak, he's adamant about taking justice to the constituents. A lot of times in the larger cities, it's hard. It's hard for them to get the bus ride to the courthouse, or anything like that, so there's opportunities where they can take virtual court into the community, set up in a grocery store, set up in a library, set up in different places in the community that is just not taking the folks where the people in the larger cities have to come into downtown or anything like that, where the courtrooms and that sort of stuff are set up.

Jeff Harrell: Communities big or small, all on the table. Do you have any favorite stories that you've heard, ones where you've worked with clients across the country that you'd love to share with us?

Marlin Jones: I will say my favorite story is sort of a warning. Like I said, it's a very tight-knit community, and we work really hands-on with a lot of our courts, so there's a lot of times that we spend time observing. We'll come into the room and we'll watch the court sessions. I know I was in with the court administrator. Virtual court sometimes just allows defendants to forget that it's still really court and we were ready to bring in a defendant, and they were in the bathroom, so warn your constituents. We say that it's still live virtual court and it should still be considered professional. Do as you would, if you walked into the brick-and-mortar, don't forget that. That's one thing that I would say is it's allowed. I know a lot of the courts have said now that they've gone back to some live sessions as well, that a lot of their defendants are calling in saying, "Kent, I don't want to come to court. I want to do this in virtual court," so that's the positive thing, too, is that it's taken a lot of that foot traffic out. Whether it's big or small, it's giving that court staff that time that they need to really focus on their day-to-day and not having to do so many inter interactions at that front desk or at that front window. They're able to conduct a lot of that business virtually.

Jeff Harrell: I love that warning. I think we probably all should remember that, too. When we get on virtual meetings, we've heard stories about people who are in the bathroom, or didn't have pants on, or all that sort of thing, so I love that warning. Any other fun examples, or stories that you have as you've worked with, like you said, these close-knit clients with virtual court?

Marlin Jones: Yeah, absolutely, Jeff. I'll say another positive thing that a lot of the courts have said is that it has really changed their failures to appear. That is huge because a lot of times, like both of us, like Jonathan and I mentioned earlier, is that the people just don't have the time to take away. A lot of courts were experiencing people just not showing up to court. Because it's virtual and they don't have to take away a lot of time, and one of the instances is a court out of Wisconsin, and they said that a lot of their folks are spending about 15 minutes with the judge, and then they get to go on with their day. That means people aren't afraid that they're going to have to go spend three or four hours sitting in a courtroom all day, so virtual court is a positive influence because 10, 15 minutes of your time, and you're done. You've been able to talk to the judge, talk to a prosecutor, and make a payment if you want to that same day, so that makes a big difference for those folks there.

Jeff Harrell: It sounds like, Marlin, there's a lot of benefits on the constituent side, not having to find childcare, not having to leave a job, not having to find transportation.

Marlin Jones: Yeah, they're able to appear. They're able to attend their court session. School teachers don't have to get a substitute. They can just ask someone to watch their class while they're on the playground. I've seen teachers on the playground just conducting court for a quick second, and then going back to the students running around to the playground, so it definitely has changed the way that the constituents have access to justice, and it's more in line with the time that's permissible to their life and their schedules. It meets them where they're at with their life.

Jeff Harrell: I love that. Then on the client side, there's tons of benefits as well. They're able to get cases through the system, they're not backlogged, things like that. What are some of the ones that maybe I'm not even aware of?

Marlin Jones: Oh, yeah. We've got courts that when the pandemic first started, they had like eight, 900 cases in their backlog, and they were so afraid that they weren't going to be able to work through those, but once they joined virtual court, they were able to continue business, and not have to shut down. Even though they shut down the courts and nobody was going in, virtual court allowed them to just conveniently log in from their home, and the judge, prosecutor, clerks, anyone that was participating in that session were able to continue business separately, and not have to completely stop everything, and then come back to 2000 cases when I think a lot of courts started opening up June/July timeframe of, I think it was, I don't remember. I'm so confused on the dates [inaudible 00:19:18].

Jeff Harrell: We all are. It sounds like great benefits for constituents, great benefits for our clients, so really, in total, the community wins.

Marlin Jones: Yeah.

Jeff Harrell: Jonathan, I'd love to turn it back to you and have you talk a little bit about the future virtual court, where it's headed, anything new that's on the horizon?

Jonathan Lang: One of the things that I think is important to say is that even though we released this in March of 2020, we didn't just release something, and it just stayed the way it was. We had been working with our clients all through that process and developing it, refining it. Then after we released it, we continued to add and change and refine based on feedback and real-life data in terms of what was going to be beneficial for those courts and what they needed, and so it's continued to grow. Right now, we're making the transition between coming out of the pandemic. Can we be hopeful and say that, coming out of the pandemic?

Jeff Harrell: Yeah, let's do that.

Jonathan Lang: Shifting from crisis, which a lot of those courts find themselves in, shifting from crisis back to convenience. Back in 2019, when this whole idea started, it was about convenience. It was about getting more people to show up for court, to get more people, to actually appear and not skip their court appearance, to make it more convenient for people, so we're starting to shift that discussion back from crisis to convenience, and really making that point. Currently, virtual court is available for our clients that are using our municipal court product, Incode Court. That's what we have it integrated with. That's what it pulls information back and forth with on there. But coming in 2022, we will also have it available for state and county courts that are using our Odyssey court case management system.

Jeff Harrell: Awesome.

Jonathan Lang: More complicated criminal cases, some civil situations, civil case situations will also be able to be handled through virtual court as well, so we're excited to see that user base expand into new case types and new experiences that can make it even more convenient for those courts as well, those larger courts as well. We're continuing to build onto it. We've got some other features that we're excited about adding into the virtual court platform, and so as we go through the course of 2022, we'll have new things that are added in there, but that's really where we stand today as far as trying to make that shift back to saying, "Look, this is beneficial outside of a pandemic situation. This benefits your defendants. It benefits your court. It helps you save time," and then just expanding the footprint of the clients that we have that can take advantage of the solution.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah, we probably have clients listening that have virtual court. Will they finally get to hear about the big announcements at Connect 2022 that they were going to hear about two years ago?

Jonathan Lang: Maybe we should relaunch it. Maybe we should go into 2022 and say, "We didn't get to make a big deal about this in 2020. Let's let's do it now. Let's have our party."

Jeff Harrell: Exactly. I love that. Well, if someone is interested in hearing more about virtual court, what's the best thing for them to do? What's a good next step for them?

Jonathan Lang: Sure thing. One thing they can always do is if they're a current Incode client, reach out to your friendly neighborhood inside sales rep, or email insidesales@tylertech.com. They can definitely get you more information about virtual court, and also, the other case resolution tool solutions that we have that link together with virtual court to really make that a seamless experience. If we have people listening to the podcast, I hope we do that are not currently part of the Incode Court family, please reach out to us. Visit tylertech.com. You can find extra information about virtual court out there. You can see a video of a short demo in terms of what it looks like, how it feels to be in virtual court, and it'll provide ways for you to get in touch with us to show your interest from that perspective as well.

Jeff Harrell: Well, Jonathan, Marlin, thanks so much for this. This is awesome. I feel like I know a lot more about virtual court, so thanks for your time and your expertise.

Marlin Jones: Absolutely. You're welcome.

Jonathan Lang: Certainly. Happy to.

Marlin Jones: Join our community. It's fun.

Jeff Harrell: Well, thanks, Jonathan and Marlin for helping us better understand how technology through our virtual court solution is providing access to justice and helping both communities and its constituents. Thank you for joining today's episode. We drop a new episode every other Monday, so please subscribe. We have a lot of great things planned as we finish off 2021 and move into 2022, so again, please subscribe, and if you enjoy the podcast, leave us a written review. That would be awesome. Well, until next time, this is Jeff Harrell, director of content marketing for Tyler technologies. We'll talk to you soon.