University of Arkansas at Little Rock: UALR Bowen Law Repository

Storaasli, Olaf O.

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process 
Volume 15 Issue 1 Article 4 
2014 
Preface: A Computational Scientist's Perspective on Appellate 
Technology 
Olaf O. Storaasli 
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Recommended Citation 
Olaf O. Storaasli, Preface: A Computational Scientist's Perspective on Appellate Technology, 15 J. APP. 
PRAC. & PROCESS 39 (2014). 
Available at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/appellatepracticeprocess/vol15/iss1/4 
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THE JOURNAL OF APPELLATE PRACTICE AND PROCESS Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring 2014) 
PREFACE: A COMPUTATIONAL SCIENTIST’S 
PERSPECTIVE ON APPELLATE TECHNOLOGY 
Olaf O. Storaasli*
I. BACKGROUND
Computer power has grown one trillion times since my 
early NASA days in the 1970s. Our first CDC 6400 
supercomputer then boasted 200 kFLOPS,1 while Oak Ridge 
National Laboratory’s new Titan supercomputer promises a 1012
speedup. This exponential rate of advance in computing power2
spins off to benefit all society, including, potentially, the 
appellate courts.
We often look back at advances made in the past and 
project forward from them, presuming that new advances will 
occur at the same rate. But our belief that computers advance at 
this linear rate is wrong; in fact, they are advancing 
exponentially.3 As we ride this exponential curve, we cannot 
perceive that our exponential rate of technological advance in 
the next five years will by far outstrip that of our past five 
years—even in our appellate courts, which may not grasp just 
how fast computer technology is advancing. This rapid advance 
is likely to continue prompting appellate courts to adopt new 
                                                          
*Vice President for International Market Development, Synective Labs AB. The reader 
should know that the author, whose professional background also includes leadership 
positions with the Computer Science and Mathematics Division’s Future Technologies 
Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Computational Structural Mechanics 
Branch at NASA Langley Research Center, holds a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics. 
 1.  A kFLOPS is 1000 FLoating-point Operations Per Second.  
 2. Advances of this type are said to follow Moore’s Law: The number of transistors in 
integrated circuits doubles every two years. 
 3. Indeed, there are those who predict that technology will someday become 
sufficiently sophisticated to merge with human intelligence. See e.g. Ray Kurzweil, The
Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking 2005). But that discussion 
is beyond the scope of this Preface. 
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40 THE JOURNAL OF APPELLATE PRACTICE AND PROCESS
technologies to meet the public’s growing expectations for 
increased efficiency and accessibility. 
Why this rush to advance technology, with no end in sight? 
Human beings strive for power and control (by brawn or brain), 
whether over the elements, animals, or enemies. Computer 
technology seems to satisfy this need by offering us 
omnipotence via its omnipresence (bringing every corner of the 
world to us via Internet, webcams, tweets, and instant messages) 
and omniscience (enabling us to know all via Google, Siri or 
Wikipedia). The truth and quality of information returned varies, 
so ratings may soon steer us to the best information, allowing us 
to increase our power over, and control of, our personal and 
professional surroundings. Ventures tapping our thirst for such 
knowledge and power may succeed in ways that we can’t yet 
imagine. Many such advances—the telepresence of evidence, 
for example—may become essential in future courts, updating 
the appellate process far beyond what we envision today. The 
four papers collected here describe how such digital advances 
have already reduced court time and costs in some appellate 
courts, and also project the future.
II. SYNOPSIS OF THE SPECIAL-SECTION PAPERS
I was indeed impressed and agree with nearly all concepts 
discussed in all papers. They complement each other, as three 
focus on different aspects of computer technology in the 
appellate courts—digital briefs, practice efficiencies, the 
paperless court in action—and the fourth provides an overview 
of appellate-court technology. 
A. Digital Briefs 
After reviewing some recent work in cognitive science, 
Professor Beazley compares reading and writing paper 
documents to working with digital records, warning that ready 
access, instant searches, and portability of digital records may 
distract, cause one to lose a feel of location in text, and tempt 
one to skim rather than read. Acknowledging, however, that 
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APPELLATE TECHNOLOGY: A COMPUTATIONAL SCIENTIST’S VIEW 41
“digital documents are not going away,”4 she suggests that 
judges and lawyers reading and writing documents used in 
digitally connected courts: 
? Use big screens to display complex information, 
mark text up digitally, and print complex text out 
before reading it; 
? Display a table of contents at the left of each screen 
to help locate each page viewed in the full 
document;  
? Read actively: use highlighting and electronic notes 
to mark critical passages, don’t skim, and use (as a 
writer) or find (as a reader) the phrase that provides 
a pithy summary of each section; 
? Avoid distractions while reading: phone off, email 
alarm silenced, set aside time just for reading; and 
? Avoid creating distractions when writing: Be 
succinct, use references, and add hotlinks. 
B. Practice Efficiencies 
Mr. Delehanty, Mr. Llanes, Mr. Rath, and Ms. Sheff, a 
team of practicing lawyers and court-technology experts, 
describe the ways in which technology is being used to reduce 
the time and expense associated with appeals, and how it might 
play an increasing role in this effort if approved by appellate 
courts:
? A pilot technology project saved one appellate court 
$2,000,000 after a $100,000 investment; 
? Widely available software for electronic case 
management, cloud storage for electronic records, 
and free web-based research portals and law  blogs 
                                                          
 4. Mary Beth Beazley, Writing and Reading Appellate Briefs in the Digital Age, 15 J. 
App. Prac. & Process 47, 76 (2014). 
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42 THE JOURNAL OF APPELLATE PRACTICE AND PROCESS
provide alternatives to both paper-based systems 
and first-generation proprietary research services; 
? Increasingly powerful laptops and tablets combined 
with web-based video services could reduce the 
costs of travel associated with oral argument, as 
could the use of web- or pod-casting technologies; 
and
? Courts should explore various sources of funding—
user fees, data fees, legislative appropriations, time-
sharing with other branches of government—that 
might provide a means of underwriting the expenses 
that accompany the adoption of new technologies. 
C. The Paperless Court in Action 
Judge Espinosa describes the “completely paperless 
appellate case management and decision processing” system 
used by Arizona’s Second District Court of Appeals,5 which 
includes:
? An electronic  dashboard (web-accessible from any 
PC, laptop, or tablet) that allows judges and court 
staff to perform all e-filing, case-processing, and 
approval (via digital signature) functions; access 
trial transcripts and records; and link to all stages of 
the court’s handling of cases, including approval 
and signing of opinions; 
? Judges’ routine use of online conferencing, which 
has increased productivity with fewer in-person 
conferences; and 
? An estimated annual savings of $20,000. 
                                                          
 5. Philip G. Espinosa, The Paperless Court of Appeals Comes of Age, 15 J. App. Prac. 
& Process 99, 99 (including a graphic representation of the electronic “dashboard” 
available to each judge). 
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APPELLATE TECHNOLOGY: A COMPUTATIONAL SCIENTIST’S VIEW 43
 D. Appellate Court Technology Overview 
Mr. Magnuson (formerly Chief Justice of the Minnesota 
Supreme Court, now in practice again as an appellate lawyer) 
and his colleague, Judge Thumma of Arizona’s First District 
Court of Appeal, discuss these aspects of technology in today’s 
appellate courts: 
? Widespread e-filing, electronic case management 
and processing, and electronic case analysis; 
? More efficient, transparent, and less complex 
appeals-processing systems enable courts to—
among other improvements—abandon rooms of 
boxed records and offer the convenience of links to 
recorded oral arguments or real-time streaming of 
oral  arguments; 
? Technology requires new thinking about the roles 
and duties of appellate lawyers and appellate 
judges, including the consideration of questions 
about whether an  appellate judge should search the 
Web for material outside the record in a particular 
case;
? The need for more technology seems certain as the 
paper-based appellate world vanishes: E-filing is 
now required by some courts, for example, in part 
because it saves money, and some appellate courts 
are experimenting with the use of video for oral 
argument; but 
? Appellate courts lag many sectors of society in 
adoption of technology, and must plan to move 
ahead with e-filing initiatives, the use of links in 
briefs and opinions, and adoption of video 
arguments. 
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44 THE JOURNAL OF APPELLATE PRACTICE AND PROCESS
III. EVALUATION OF THE SPECIAL SECTION’S
SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
A. The Roadmap 
The papers that follow identify key technology advances 
automating how courts process cases. To aid the reader wishing 
to implement some or all of the technology described in the 
papers, I include a roadmap based on the four special-section 
papers and related computation innovations6 that I introduced 
during my years at NASA and the Department of Energy.  
First, success in the implementation of new appellate 
technology requires all interested parties to agree that digital 
technology should replace paper use for improved court 
efficiency.
Second, a successful judicial-support process (like a 
successful engineering project) requires a detailed development 
plan, understood and supported by all. The plan should have a 
clear goal, perhaps as broadly stated as “simplify everyone’s 
legal workload by providing better service to judges, lawyers, 
court staff, and the public,” and all must agree on a firm launch 
date after which e-filing and any other technology-driven 
changes in historic practice are required. 
Third, examples should be provided to everyone who will 
use the new technology, clearly explaining what to expect, so no 
mystery remains. Questions and feedback should be encouraged 
before the launch date in an open setting with a complete 
understanding and buy-in by all. To whet appetites for progress, 
updates—think of them, perhaps, as “nuggets” of information— 
should be released in a timely way to prepare all for the launch. 
A beta release for early adopters (volunteers chosen from among 
the judges and lawyers eager to be first) is highly desirable to 
obtain initial feedback and overcome glitches; these volunteers 
are invaluable because they will be available to answer other 
users’ questions during the official launch. 
Fourth, build on others’ success. Judge Espinosa’s paper 
provides an excellent working model to follow. It is user 
                                                          
 6. Consider, for example, the finite element machine. See e.g. Olaf Storaasli, Jonathan 
Ransom & Robert Fulton, Structural Dynamic Analysis on a Parallel Computer: The Finite 
Element Machine, 26:4 Computers & Structures 551 (1987). 
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APPELLATE TECHNOLOGY: A COMPUTATIONAL SCIENTIST’S VIEW 45
friendly; paperless, including even digital signatures on judicial 
opinions; web accessible; hardware and software agnostic, so 
that it is not tied to any particular device or operating system; 
able to link widely used existing software (some available in off-
the-shelf packages and some that was already in use at his 
court); and easily extendable for future additions; and it has now 
been tried and tested for years. Its success may be attributed to 
two key factors in the form of two individuals whose roles other 
appellate-court technology innovators are encouraged to 
emulate: 
? Top-down vision and passion by an experienced 
judge interested in simplifying his own and others’  
work; and 
? A key digital-web-network-hardware-legal-software 
expert who is familiar with the court’s legacy 
system and can interface existing codes. 
Having two such forward-looking innovators with a passionate 
interest in improving systems is a key to success at any 
technology-modernizing court, because it pairs top-down 
commitment and bottom-up support with a thorough 
understanding of the venture by in-house leaders. 
Finally, avoid the temptation to pass the buck to 
disinterested third parties eager to sell their wares. Instead, 
maintain an in-depth knowledge of the project by in-house 
principals like a key judge and a senior IT professional who 
have sufficient interest and knowledge to remain closely 
involved in the process. Remember that successful projects 
usually have key buy-in, commitment, passion, and involvement 
by those most knowledgeable of current detailed operations plus 
a keen understanding of what is required in the future 
implementation.  
B. Engineering a Court-Technology Project’s Success 
One task of NASA Langley’s Chief Scientist was to review 
proposed projects for feasibility and quality, but also to 
determine the passion of the team involved. Management found 
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46 THE JOURNAL OF APPELLATE PRACTICE AND PROCESS
that despite how credible all proposed projects appeared, those 
that turned out to be most successful had a dedicated team with a 
passion to succeed despite the odds. I, for example, once felt 
needled on my proposed project only to be told it was part of the 
process intended to determine how dedicated I was to success. 
Others caved to such needling and lost funding, while my 
project was continued. Every court-technology innovator should 
keep this example in mind. 
Today’s young, computer-savvy generation of appellate 
attorneys may expect and push for technology-based 
improvements like e-filing and digital case management, and be 
ready for the accompanying changes in the duties and 
responsibilities of appellate courts and appellate lawyers. But 
some appellate courts and judges may be inclined to resist. I 
suggest in consequence that they could benefit from these four 
papers.
I commend the authors’ positive spirit expressed in their 
careful, detailed descriptions of all issues related to introducing 
and then using technology in the appellate courts. I am duly 
impressed with their remarkable success using paperless 
caseload systems, already functioning efficiently and saving 
money. And I hope that these papers motivate other appellate 
judges to strive for ways to harness computer technology in their 
own courts. 
Equipped with the in-depth knowledge of court-focused 
technology available in these seminal papers, I trust that future 
courts will embrace technology to significantly improve their 
operations. The result should serve the public well, by yielding 
efficient, transparent, and modern appellate courts that we can 
all be proud of. 


English

Preface: A Computational Scientist\u27s Perspective on Appellate Technology

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Jacobowitz, Jan L.

Cultivating Professional Identity & Creating Community: A Tale of Two Innovations

Lestage, Kathleen

Contract Law—No Faith in Arkansas’s approach to the Implied Duty of Good Faith. Arkansas Research Medical Testing, LLC v. Osborne, 2011 Ark. 158, 2011 WL 1423993.

May, Nancy Bellhouse

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process 
Volume 15 Issue 1 Article 1 
2014 
The Appeal of Technology 
Nancy Bellhouse May 
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Recommended Citation 
Nancy Bellhouse May, The Appeal of Technology, 15 J. APP. PRAC. & PROCESS v (2014). 
Available at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/appellatepracticeprocess/vol15/iss1/1 
This document is brought to you for free and open access by Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. It has 
been accepted for inclusion in The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process by an authorized administrator of 
Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. For more information, please contact mmserfass@ualr.edu. 
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THE JOURNAL OF
APPELLATE PRACTICE
AND PROCESS
FOREWORD
THE APPEAL OF TECHNOLOGY
I am old enough to have been in law school when electronic
legal research was new. My classmates and I spent the fall of our
first year researching by hand, not yet authorized to use either
Lexis or WestLaw. And even in the second semester, most of us
did most of our research by pulling books and flipping through
them. I know, in fact, that some people made it through first year
without using either the Lexis terminals in their dark little room
behind the circulation desk or the WestLaw terminals in their
similarly small but better-lighted room nearby. And we all
continued to stack books on library tables; take notes on legal
pads; trace cases through volume after volume of Shepard’s
Citations; and trudge from shelf to shelf exchanging the dead
ends for more promising books until we were finally ready to
write.
I remember that WestLaw was more popular than Lexis,
mostly because its user interface (which I am confident we never
referred to as a user interface) was widely regarded as easier to
understand. But because I could often get to a Lexis terminal
when the WestLaw room was full, I became a Lexis devotee. This
turned out to be a boon: The firm with which I spent my first law-
school summer signed up with Lexis on my first day of work, and
I was suddenly the office expert.
A few years later, I returned to one of my summer firms and
saw an even younger lawyer—a lawyer!—seated at one of the
secretarial desks, typing on a keyboard and squinting at a screen.
Like my friends in the windowed offices surrounding the
secretarial pool, I thought it looked weird, inappropriate, and
just plain wrong. Lawyers dictate and secretaries type: So it had
always been, and so, we thought, it would continue to be. Of
course we were wrong.
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vi THE JOURNAL OF APPELLATE PRACTICE AND PROCESS
Today everybody types. Or swipes. Or clicks. Or taps. And
some of us talk to Siri. There’s no going back. Technology, as this
issue’s special-section papers confirm, has already changed the
ways of the more progressive appellate courts, is remaking the
offices of many appellate lawyers, and will doubtless continue to
modify appellate practices and processes in ways that we are
incapable of imagining today—all at astonishing speed. We must
continue to adapt, adopting an improvement or two from each
new technological wave if we are to have any hope of keeping
up.
On the other hand, however, we must be wary of adopting
the next new thing just because it’s the next new thing. Electronic
systems that process and organize digital records have many
advantages over the hand filing of paper documents. But what if
digital records vanish because of technical glitches? The
mismatch between the archives of the Second, Seventh,
Eleventh, and Federal Circuits and the recently upgraded version
of PACER is a case in point.1 What if the incompatibilities had
been impossible to resolve? And what if no one had sounded the
alarm? PACER might have moved to an all-digital format
without preserving access to those archived records, which would
have been lost to us all.2 We should in consequence approach
digital developments with humility, remembering that new
technologies appear with a speed that can at first outstrip our
ability to channel their power.
THE REST OF THE ISSUE
In addition to the fascinating pieces in this issue’s special
section, we have an essay focused on what the Supreme Court of
Canada’s approach to statutory interpretation might have to
1. See United States Courts, PACER, Restoring Access to Information Available on
PACER, https://www.pacer.gov/announcements/general/webpacer.html (announcing that
“the locally developed legacy case management systems” of the affected courts “became
incompatible with PACER and electronic access to information in closed cases on those
systems was disrupted” in mid-August of 2014, but promising that “[t]he judiciary will
restore full electronic access to identical case information previously available to the
public” through the legacy systems) (accessed Oct. 24, 2014; copy on file with Journal of
Appellate Practice and Process).
2. It is of course only fair to point out that paper records can themselves disappear.
See e.g. National Archives at St. Louis, Military Personnel Records, 1973 Fire, http://www
.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/fire-1973.html (noting that “a disastrous fire at
the National Personnel Records Center . . . destroyed approximately 16–18 million
Official Military Personnel Files,” and that no list of the lost records is available)
(accessed Oct. 24, 2014; copy on file with Journal of Appellate Practice and Process).
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FOREWORD vii
offer appellate courts in the United States and a review of the
new third edition of Bryan Garner’s indispensable The Winning
Brief. Whether you are reading this issue as words on paper or
pixels on a screen, I invite you to enjoy it all.
NBM
Little Rock
October 24, 2014


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