JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG

WELCOME TO THE OFFICIAL RICHARD E GERSTEIN JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG. THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO JUSTICE BUILDING RUMOR, HUMOR, AND A DISCUSSION ABOUT AND BETWEEN THE JUDGES, LAWYERS AND THE DEDICATED SUPPORT STAFF, CLERKS, COURT REPORTERS, AND CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS WHO LABOR IN THE WORLD OF MIAMI'S CRIMINAL JUSTICE. POST YOUR COMMENTS, OR SEND RUMPOLE A PRIVATE EMAIL AT HOWARDROARK21@GMAIL.COM. Winner of the prestigious Cushing Left Anterior Descending Artery Award.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

THE PONY EXPRESS

11:35 PM: Our Miami Criminal Defense Attorney (MCDA) leans over in bed and picks up his iPhone and says "Siri wake me up tomorrow at 6:30." Siri responds affirmatively. 
6:20 AM. MCDA's coffee maker, having been programed, grinds a set of beans and begins to brew coffee. 
6:30 AM. MCDA wakes up. He reaches over to his iPad on the night stand and checks his email account, scans his Twitter feed and looks at the headiness  of the NY Times on line. 
7:45 AM: MCDA's GPS in his car alerts him to an accident on US 1 and recommends he turn off US 1 and proposes a route through Coconut Grove to I-95 and the courthouse. 
8:33 AM. Once at the courthouse parking lot, MCDA reviews his daily calendar on his iPad and then looks through some legal papers that have been scanned into a file. He logs on to Google and looks at a client's file he has stored in Google docs. 
9:27 AM. After an easy morning in court, MCDA heads to his office. On the way he uses the bluetooth cellphone connection  in his car to return a few client phone calls. 
10:11 AM. MCDA arrives at his office and picks up the mail. 
There are a stack of twenty two court notices that have been mailed to his office. 21st century technology stopped dead in its tracks courtesy of the Miami Dade Clerk's Office. 


Welcome to the practice of criminal law in Miami circa 2012. When it comes to schedules and calendars and notices from the clerk, there is not much difference in the practice of law today from 1982- thirty years ago. 
Thirty years ago you didn't have a cell phone or a beeper. Nothing about your TV was flat if it was working. The word "Internet" didn't exist in most dictionaries (neither did Al Gore ). If you were sick you didn't get a CAT scan. An X-ray sufficed. Look how far we've come (Newt Gingrich excepted). 
But what happened to the Dade County Clerk's Office? It's as if some evil villain from Star Trek has frozen the clerk's office just as it was in 1982.
How many of you would sign up to receive emails from the clerk's office as an official court notice? How much money would that save in paper and postage? What if you could add your client's email address as well? But who's going to explain to Harvey Ruvin what an email is? 


Here's a comment we received the other day:
Anonymous said...

E-filing? What's that? Oh yeah, that's the thing they do in Broward.
What Brown should be ashamed of is that court notices for criminal are actually MAILED to attorneys. Mailed- like they did in the 1940's
Here's an idea- and stick with me on this. The county buys a Commodore 64 computer off of ebay. They buy a copy of Windows 95 and a copy of Adobe 7.0 from 2006. They hire a computer programmer from any of about 36 technical schools in Miami or even from a local university. The computer programmer programs the above mentioned computer to print the court notice to electronic format. They then take the electronic format notice and they send it via email to the attorney. Voila, no more paper notices being mailed out by the thousands.
My receptionist is 17 and even she asks why the court mails a court notice to me for a date I've known about for three months. Or the infamous Notice of Cancellation postcard which usually arrives after the cancelled date. There's more taxpayer paid technology in the Marlins' stadium locker rooms than there is at the Clerk's office.
Okay, I'm out. Judge Brown and I gotta go buy some carbon paper at Zayre's.
Rumpole notes: There's more truth to that comment than humor.
See You In Court. 

33 comments:

old guy said...

Any chance that Rumpole will buy me a newer computer. Mine has an "old" version of WORD, and not all documents can be read. I am not a luddite, but have better ways to spend my dollars.

Green Mile said...

Just got a request for endorsement and $$ from Maria Elena Verde. It had to have been written by a high school sophomore.

Did you know that she coordinated "many different activities" and handled "many different cases" and "tried many cases" and is a "Business Woman"?

ESOL classes not working. And that's what we get.

mikal said...

I received an order approving a final adoption hearing by video, several days after the adoption was finalized.

Maria, the adoption clerk, does an excellent job of keeping the adoptions running smoothly, but she is extremely overworked. Electronic filing would assist her tremendously. Instead of having her scan in hundreds of pages per file, while trying to run the adoption window, it would be the attorneys' responsibility to scan the file correctly.

I really can't wait for electronic filing to happen, because when it does, it will be as if a light turned on, and the powers that be will then kick themselves for not having implemented electronic filing sooner. It is really inexcusable that it has taken this long.

Anonymous said...

I am on a rules committee and no one would believe the substantial debate that has gone on about e-service. As a member of generation x, I was absolutely astounded at how many committee members were opposed to it. If we cannot get the bar to accept technological advances, we can't expect the clerk to implement them.

Anonymous said...

The current system may be antiquated, but I have no confidence that the clerks office will implement a workable electronic system.

Case in point- SPIRIT.

Has been in existence for more than 10 years, and it can only be accessed in courthouses. Wouldn't it be helpful if attorneys could access the system online to view cases?

Instead, you have to go to a courtroom, ask the PD to move, push their files out of the way, block the glare, skin your knuckles on the mouse and keyboard, only to have the error message come up when you click on your case.

Clerk won't get this right. I'd bet money on it

Rumpole said...

2% of Americans think Mitt Romney's first name is 'MITTENS". Yes, two out of a hundred people-think about that as you stand in line at the courthouse tomorrow- think that Romney has the same first name as a cuddly kitten. Mittens.

Anonymous said...

Slight problem with that. Electronic notices are still not legal. Duh! Do you want your client to get an AC because your computer got a virus?

Anonymous said...

Ruvin is a State statutory office holder who is elected County wide by the voters, he and only he absent a state law makes the decisions regards the Court files and it's access. He answers to know one but the States law and under State law has the power to enact e-filing. The problem is all that $68 million dollars wasted by under the table payments to consultants has been blow away on beach front homes.

Exhibit "A" Thomas James, c'mon do some research on who he was 10 years ago and is net worth before becoming a consultant for the Clerk. What did you find? Do more research on what his education background was and is, what did you find?

Shocked I bet!

Welcome to the world of a seasoned Miami Dade Politician, a former Miami Dade Commission wired with corrupt friends from left to right. Now figure out what happened to the $68 million Ruvin spent on technology. How many under the table or over the table consultant payments went? Why about 8 years ago did Ruvin fire all the County technology staff for this outsider Thomas James?

Bottom line is anyone can do a website for $9 a month at godaddy.com so what happened to the money?

Anonymous said...

The same 2% think Gingrich made his money from his namesake, the Fig Newton, which bears his name.

Anonymous said...

I'm more concerned that his first name WILLARD.

Anonymous said...

If we go to E-filing and all docs, etc are electronic, will Judges remove those stupid signs telling us to TURN OFF our phones and electronic devises. How can we read our e-files if our e-reading devises are off in court. Or do only the Judge and ASA get to use computers /and smart phones in court?
DS

Anonymous said...

We had a President named Millard. Willard isn't that much of a stretch. Blame his parents, he didn't pick the name. You have plenty of other things to be concerned about this tool.

Like, that this tool might beat Black Jesus in November.

Newbie said...

Someone told me Kenny Weisman is a hale fellow well met. Any truth to that? I need advice on a case.

Fake Tannebaum said...

I surrender. I've just been told off by the master. He put me in my place. A thorough whooping. I' m done. No more posting. It's all over. All my hopes-gone. All my dreams-quashed. Finite. Morte. It's over Johnny. To quote my real hero, Richard Millhouse Nixon: "gentlemen, you will write it any way you see fit, but you (he heh) won't have Fake Tannebaum to kick around anymore. "

I'm done and outta here ! it's been fun. I would just like to thank my girlfriend who encouraged me with the character, and my mom who never gave up on me, and my mentor Real Fake Former Judge who taught me everything about the business when I was just a scared young kid trying to make a name for myself.

Goodbye.

Darth nihilius said...

Wow! Go look at what Brian wrote on the previous post! Brian you know who you are? You're the freakin Jedi knight of social media. The force flows through you. "these are not the droids you are interested in". "these are not the droids I am interested in". "You will stop posting as fake tannebaum". "i will stop posting as fake tannebaum"

Pretty amazing when you see a jedi master work up close. Frightening actually but damn impressive.

Anonymous said...

Rump, you forgot that most Miami criminal defense attorneys text their girflriends before going to bed, not including the one they are next to. Get with it!

Real Fake Former Judge. said...

Sing it soul sistah. Been there, texted that.

CAPTAIN JUSTICE said...

The Captain Reports:

RUMPOLE ......

Bob Costas, of NBC Sports, runs with his big interview on Super Bowl Sunday of the Chosen One, Tom Terrific Brady.

His "knock it out of the park" question is:

There's two minutes to go in the game. Would you rather be up by three points and have Manning with the ball at his own 20 yard line. Or, would you rather be down by three points and have yourself at your own 20 yard line?

Great question. What do you think his answer was?

I would, in typical lawyer fashion, say that I needed one more piece of information. The score. If it was 17-14, a defensive game, then I like being up with two minutes to go. If it's 34-31, then I want the ball.

What do you think Horace?

Cap Out .....

Anonymous said...

Just found out Don Cornelius is dead at age 75. According the the AP, suioide. I'm of mixed heritate and I grew up watching Soul Train every Saturday morning, dancing along all the way. Drove my father crazy to watch me do that. Soul Train was what everyone watched on Ssturday when you graduaded from cartoons. Love and Soul, that was the mantra. But at 75, self-infliced gunshot, that really shakes me. One never knows the private hell a person is living through to commit such action. May he rest in peace.

real fake former judge said...

sorry to see you go kid. I thought you had the makings to be a great one. This is a tough buisiness.

Rumpole said...

Captain, I am not remotely interested in what that cheating excuse for a QB says or does. Note that he and his coach and their merry band of cheaters have not won a soper bowl since their ceating ways were exoposed and I fully expect that to continue this Sunday. But I guess I f I had to say what pretty boy Brady would sya,. he wiould want to know the defensive plays and audibles in advance so he could have a chance, because without cheating his a cheap sixth round flash in the pan.

Anonymous said...

Your scenario didn't seem all that 'advanced' to me.
Maybe you save some time because of gps traffic alert.
No difference btwn talking to siri and setting alarm clock.
Coffee maker still had to be programmed; most still don't fill themselves with water. Just done in your example probably the night before.
I walk out to driveway to scan headlines of paper that is there waiting.
After parking I review legal docs that are in my hand, review schedule printed for me day before.
Before bluetooth phones I had time to think in my car, reflect on cases, plan out things; didn't have such high insurance rates caused by two rear end accidents caused because I was so distracted trying to get clients to understand me.

If all this technology is so great why do we all long for the 'good ole days'?

Do we have all sorts of free time and are able to golf more because of these advances? Lucky you if that;s the case.

Or are we so caught up in trying to get the next best version of the newest gadget that we're running ourselves ragged in spite of all these 'helpful' devices.

Anonymous said...

Wednesday, February 01, 2012 1:39:00 PM

Just as with cars that change yearly, the rich get the next model and the poor buy the old for cheap.

That's how the world turns, if not for the next model of gadgets the poor would never have been able to have a computer. Remember 1997 a desk top went for over $3-K today a decent desk top on sale goes for $300 bucks.

The world turns and so do we, thats just life.

Harvey Ruvin is a old gizard who is still trying to work an 8 track car player. Until he is ousted and his 15 or so close buddies are tossed by a newly elected clerk we shall be in the stone age for sometime.

Anonymous said...

@12:17--His mantra---- "......and as always in parting, we wish you love, peace... and SOUL!"

Anonymous said...

Rump,

I heard David Paulus has passed away.

Anonymous said...

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/01/2619686/veteran-miami-dade-prosecutor.html

Anonymous said...

David Paulus passed away of brain cancer.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/01/2619686/veteran-miami-dade-prosecutor.html

Anonymous said...

In case you missed it, the last few posts on the last thread from the Captain's post are great. Go back one day and enjoy the reading.

CAPTAIN JUSTICE said...

The Captain Reports:

VERY SAD NEWS ....

I have been told by a close friend that, unfortunately, ASA David Paulus has finally lost his battle with brain cancer. Our prayers go out to his wife Nina and their three children. Just like with his job, David fought like hell to beat this dreaded disease, but in the end, it was just too much.

Those of us fortunate enough to know David, outside of the office, know that he was a warm and caring soul and a great dad to his children. He was always a tough competitor in the ring/courtroom, but he always fought fair.

I have been told that there is a fund being set up and administered by David's closest friend, David Kahn.

If you want to give a donation, they can be made to the David Paulus Family Trust and mailed to David Kahn, Esq. at Green & Kahn, 317 71st St., Miami Beach, FL 33141.

We will all miss him greatly. He was 46 years old.

Cap Out .....

Anonymous said...

Newbie-

Hail fellow, not hale.

The answer is yes, generally, Ken is a hail fellow well met.

GL

Fake tannebaum said...

( sniffle) starbucks....twitter (sniffle) wine.... Bar complaints....#mysugarfreelawlicense..... Just thinking of what I lost and what will never be (sniffle).

Anonymous said...

This is nothing; Osceola county does not allow traffic citations to be paid online after 30 days from receipt. In other words, if you contest the ticket, online bill pay is not an option!

Anonymous said...

As someone who knows, I can tell you that eFiling is not going to fix anything. It is going to make things much more difficult for awhile at least. Also, eFiling has nothing to do with eService (service via email). That project has been floating through the FL Supreme Court since the Fall of 2010.