Certain interactions with a governmental entity require that a legal proceeding be initiated before that governmental entity. Generally, whenever a legal case is created, the governmental entity issues a case number to the legal case in order for parties and the governmental entity to be able to identify that case. During the pendency of the legal case, which is generally measured from the time the legal proceeding is initiated (case filed) until when the legal proceeding is terminated, certain actions must be undertaken by the parties involved with the legal proceeding within a certain time period. Additionally, certain actions must be undertaken by the governmental entity within a certain time period that generally needs to be tracked by the parties involved in the legal proceeding. If the parties do not undertake the required or requested actions within the specified period of time, a legal right is lost. These actions range from making appearances, responding to discovery requests, filing an appeal or oppositions to a motion in a litigation case, to responding to official actions, filing formal drawings or paying fees in a patent or trademark case.
Naturally, whenever the number of cases handled by parties increases, it becomes more difficult to manage these legal cases since many of these actions have deadlines that are sometimes months if not years into the future. With the increase in litigation cases, and the rapid advancement in technology, which has created a near exponential growth in the number of patent and trademark cases, the management of these cases requires additional attention.
Docketing or calendaring is the process by which attorneys, their assistants, or clients, track the progress of a legal proceeding or legal case. Docketing can be either done manually by entering actions and their due dates onto a paper calendar, or done electronically by employing software that keeps track of actions and their due dates using electronic databases.
The importance of legal calendaring is central to the legal profession, as the tracking of actions due for a case and other data associated with the legal case are the means by which the cases are processed by the governmental entities and provide the structure for lawyers and their clients to present the merits of their case to the governmental entity. A mistake in calendaring or docketing, or the inaccessibility of docketing data, actions due and their due dates, can result in serious damage to a client's case and legal rights, and that in turn can have serious consequences for the attorney who represents a client in that legal case.
Handwritten entries onto paper calendars provided parties with means of reminding them of actions due in a legal case, however, in response to the pressures stated above, electronic docketing technologies have become more prevalent. While advances in electronic docketing have been significant in aiding parties in keeping track of their cases, many of the issues surrounding accuracy in docketing has been ignored. In particular, a significant source of error in electronic docketing is the manual entry and re-entry of data into electronic systems. For example, when the United States Patent and Trademark Office issues an official action, the official action is physically mailed to a party that has applied for a patent or their representative. The relevant information regarding the patent application case has to be manually entered into an electronic docketing system. That is, the mail date of the official action has to be manually entered into the electronic docketing system. If actions, an official action mail date or similar dates, other data, or action due dates are erroneously entered, legal rights may still be lost, even if an electronic legal docketing system is used. The problem with the current electronic docketing systems is understood better if for example one considers the procedures for “foreign filing” a trademark application internationally in 150 different countries. Even if representatives in each of those countries had the identical currently available electronic legal docketing system, the data related to the same trademark would have to be re-entered 150 times into the docketing systems of representative attorneys around the world. Needles to say, the chance of errors in docketing increase as the number the number of manual entry of data increases. Therefore, continued re-entry has a tremendous cost other than the cost of the software, maintaining the software, upgrading it, and updating the rules in it.
Other processes also contribute to more manual re-entry of substantially identical information and docketing errors, for example, whenever cases are transferred from one law firm to another. Even if the two law firms use the same commercially available electronic legal docketing system, the actions due and other associated data regarding the legal case must be manually re-entered into the new law firm's electronic docketing system. The same is true when an attorney from one law firm leaves the employ of one law firm and transfers their own cases to the new law firm. In addition to the errors that can be caused by manual re-entry of data, during the time period between when the cases were taken off from the old docketing system until the time they were re-entered into the new docketing system, some actions may come due. If these due actions are not responded to because they did not exist on the new docketing system, the case may lapse or become abandoned.
Furthermore, whenever requests for actions, such as those in the form of an official action in a patent case, is mailed to a party, there is a chance that the mailed documents will get lost in mail, or in the office of the party who received the documents. Naturally, if the documents get lost in the mail, no docketing of the actions due occurs and legal rights may be lost. Additionally, the cost of operating and maintaining electronic databases is significantly high to users. These electronic systems require individuals that are highly trained in their profession as well as system administration such as management of databases and backups.
Often during court appearances in litigation cases, a judge will set dates for parties to perform certain actions. Most legal practitioners do not have access to their docketing systems to determine whether the dates the Judge is proposing are free for the legal practitioner, or whether they have prior engagements on the days the judge is proposing.
Therefore, the current electronic docketing systems do not address the problems associated with legal case docketing especially in regards to manual re-entry of substantially identical information.
The insufficiencies of the current electronic legal docketing systems are demonstrated when one considers that nearly fifty percent (50%) of all legal malpractice cases against attorneys in the United States are as a result of docketing errors. That is, of all the litigation cases clients bring forward against their own attorneys, half are based upon the attorney or law firm's errors in docketing an action, which resulted in the extinguishments of a legal right of the attorney's client.
Put in context, the amount of money spent by clients on legal fees currently exceeds $100 Billion in the U.S. alone. Further, there are now nearly one million attorneys in the U.S. Therefore, the amount of money at stake and the number of people affected can be quite significant when it comes to ensuring that docketing is done properly and is made readily accessible. The importance of the problems that exist in docketing has not been lost to legal malpractice insurance companies, which now provide significant cash discounts to attorneys on their annual malpractice premiums if the attorney can demonstrate that they have redundant docketing systems to reduce the likelihood of error. Therefore, some firms have undertaken to use electronic and redundant docketing systems, which has increased the cost of managing them. For others, the cost of electronic and redundant docketing is prohibitive as these “standalone” systems require installation, hardware requirements, office networking, database maintenance, software upgrades, conversion of data from the old database to the new database after software upgrades, and legal rules updates, which has left many legal practitioners without the use and benefit of appropriate case management systems.
In view of the foregoing, there is a significant need for a computer based centrally managed legal docketing system that reduces manual re-entry of legal data to reduce the possibility of docketing errors.
There is an additional need for an intelligent docketing system that automatically dockets certain action only from entry of other data, such as when a foreign filing date is docketed when one provides a case filing date to the docketing system.
There is also a need for a legal docketing system that enables the user to access and edit their actions due, actions due date, and legal data regardless of their physical location.
Further, there is a need for a computer docketing system that provides users with centralized storage, access, and editing of their electronic data via the Internet.
There is also a need for a computerized docketing system wherein the user can customize the type of reminders, quantity of reminders, and time of reminders. Additionally, there is a need for legal docketing system that can provide action due reminders to parties in various forms including facsimile and electronic mail message.
Lastly, such a system must be affordable and reduce the cost in maintaining databases, maintaining back up of databases, updating legal rules and requirements tailored to particular legal practices, and upgrading software without data conversion.