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September 03, 2020

New Jersey Courts makes the case for virtual proceedings with Microsoft Teams, provides vital legal services during COVID-19

More than a week before the Governor of New Jersey issued a statewide stay-at-home order to protect the public from COVID-19, the New Jersey Courts made a decision that would have a profound impact on public service in the coming months. It was Wednesday, March 11, 2020. Motivated by a challenge from Chief Justice Stuart Rabner to keep the courts going, more than 9,000 employees, including 500 judges, began transitioning to remote work. By Wednesday, March 17—St. Patrick’s Day—the entire workforce across 15 local jurisdictions had adopted Microsoft Teams, the digital collaboration solution in Microsoft 365, and were working as usual.

New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts

Over the next three months, more than 300,000 members of the public were served by the courts in more than 36,000 virtual legal proceedings, including the first virtual supreme court hearing in the United States.

“Legal interactions conducted virtually means citizens and attorneys manage their time more efficiently. With Teams, the New Jersey judiciary has found a way to improve public service.”

Judge Glenn A. Grant, Acting Administrative Director, New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts

“We had strong leadership from the Chief Justice, our Chief Information Officer, and the extraordinary work of the IT units in our local jurisdictions,” says Judge Glenn A. Grant, Acting Administrative Director of the New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts. “Recognizing that we couldn’t do jury trials remotely, everyone was united in the desire to keep all other aspects of the legal system moving forward. We used Teams to handle the entire workload of the court system—on the judicial and the administrative side—and continued to assist people by having their matters heard in a timely and efficient way.” 

Plentiful in-person training provided by IT staff contributed to the successful pivot to remote work. “I can’t overstate the creative drive and dedication of our IT teams,” says Marie Kerrivan, Trial Court Administrator in the Hudson vicinage (an organization unit defined by the New Jersey Courts). “The IT office is across the hall and it was non-stop for two days with judges, law clerks, and other staff coming and going in 15-minute increments.”

Moving to the cloud promotes business resilience, keeps the courts open  

An independent branch of state government, the New Jersey Courts was established in 1947. Every year, approximately 7 million new cases are filed in the state’s 15 vicinages. The NJ Administrative Office of the Courts provides governance over the entire New Jersey judiciary. 

The centralized culture at New Jersey Courts is one reason that everyone quickly transitioned to remote work. Another is the long history of digital transformation at the New Jersey judiciary. Beginning with enabling electronic filing and creating virtual courtrooms to hear risk assessments for newly arrested persons, the partnership between Judge Grant and the New Jersey Courts Chief Information Officer Jack McCarthy keeps the judiciary at the forefront of technology innovation. 

“We’ve made strong and consistent investments into digital technology over the years, and Microsoft has been a significant partner in some of the designs and functionality that we created, “says Judge Grant. 

The New Jersey Courts deployed Microsoft 365 digital workplace tools in 2019. According to McCarthy, the journey to the cloud accelerated after a couple of natural disasters—a fire at headquarters threatened its datacenter, and a flood at a Bergen County probation facility destroyed all the paper files—underscored the need to move to the cloud to achieve better business continuity. 

There were also increasing demands from judges and law clerks to work on their trial briefs at home. “We saw the growing urgency for digital reform at work, for productivity and business continuity,” says McCarthy. “When I arrived 12 years ago, the first thing I did was switch to Microsoft Office from Lotus Notes, and we continued that trajectory. Everyone is used to the Microsoft interface, and the products are interoperable and highly secure. Microsoft 365 is the now the foundation for our digital workplace.” 

With the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis, NJ Office of the Courts proved the benefit of moving to the cloud and deploying a digital workplace. “With Microsoft 365 and Teams, we already had the cloud technology in place to move staff home quickly,” says McCarthy.

Improving public service: The case for digital proceedings 

Since the NJ Office of the Courts began working remotely, it’s clear that there’s a great case for digital legal proceedings. First, the public loves them. Judge Grant has received more positive feedback about the convenience of digital interactions than on any other topic. “People don’t need to drive, pay for gas, make childcare arrangements, or take time off work to move their legal matters forward,” he says. “Legal interactions conducted virtually means citizens and attorneys manage their time more efficiently. With Teams, the New Jersey judiciary has found a way to improve public service.” 

There’s a real human impact to the NJ Office of the Courts’ use of Teams. Thousands of New Jersey citizens already dealing with uncertainties could now rely on their child adoption hearings, divorce proceedings, restraining orders, or probation hearings moving forward as scheduled. “We completed a child adoption process using Teams meetings, and because we were doing it remotely, family members from across the country could also share in the joy of the moment,” says Judge Grant. “It was a first.” 

Participants in New Jersey drug court, a diversionary program for people who have a drug addiction and commit crimes, continued their addiction treatments and meetings with the drug court team. There was even a virtual graduation ceremony for those who completed the program—held in Teams. “Participants shared their stories about their journeys to recovery in a way that wouldn’t have happened at the usual in-person event,” says Judge Grant. “There’s something about being able to talk freely from the safety of your home. Legal proceedings can be intimidating, but remote interactions over Teams makes the encounter more successful by reducing anxiety.” 

And according to Kerrivan, the Family Division now relies almost exclusively on Teams to provide virtual bench trials, mediation, supervised visits, child support hearings, and settlement conferences. “The Family Division is tough because there’s not a lot of good news, says Kerrivan. “But we were able to get resolutions for divorces and schedule cases that might have been delayed if we didn’t have Teams. We had a divorce pending and the parties were eager to move forward because the defendant on the divorce complaint was getting remarried, and the plaintiff was going to be the best man at his soon-to-be ex-wife’s wedding. Everything went ahead as planned!”

Turning the wheels of justice with digital productivity

Today, more than 10,000 Teams meetings have replaced hours of face-to-face meetings and thousands of emails, accelerating the behind-the-scenes teamwork required to move legal matters forward. “I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the significant benefits to the administrative side of the house that we get from Teams,” says Judge Grant. 

Kerrivan knew from the moment she opened Teams that it would have a huge impact on collaboration and productivity at the Hudson vicinage. “My first reaction was ‘Wow!’ As a trial court administrator, I can connect with staff at all levels of the organization to work together in real time, from anywhere. With Teams, I felt like I had a tool to do everything.” 

Many staffers find Teams meetings offer an egalitarian approach to collaboration that supports their productivity. “Teams meetings deconstruct all the formality of in-person meetings and let you really focus on results,” says Kerrivan. “I have had way more results-driven Teams meetings than I have had committee meetings in person.” 

Kerrivan is on a committee that’s examining the viability of virtual grand juries, “a concept that would never have passed my mind a few months ago,” she says. Kerrivan and 35 other people used Teams meetings to create a document on initial findings and proposals. “Two judges presided as we grappled with a new and difficult concept,” she says. “We used real-time co-collaboration, raised hands, side bar chat—all the things that make Teams such a productive workspace. We delivered a 59-page virtual grand jury recommendation to the court for consideration in five days. In a bureaucracy like ours, that’s unheard of.”

Deploying a highly secure digital workspace 

When the New Jersey Courts deployed Microsoft 365, it took advantage of the advanced security services in Enterprise Mobility + Security E5. These services comply with the NIST cybersecurity standards that the New Jersey judiciary adopted in 2017, and simplify security administration for IT staff. 

“The Microsoft 365 tools for antivirus and mobile device management have matured dramatically and provide us with a better security platform for our endpoints,” says Ron Wildmann, Assistant Director, Technical services at the New Jersey Courts. “We switched from Symantec to Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection [ATP] on all desktops. We also migrated from AirWatch to Microsoft Intune for mobile device management.” 

Microsoft Defender ATP works with Microsoft Azure ATP to proactively detect and protect against malicious activity on devices used by employees. The IT department uses Intune for Mobile Application Management (MAM) policies to help protect data and define data access policies for employees. Intune is now part of Microsoft Endpoint Manager, a unified platform that also includes Microsoft Configuration Manager. The MAM policies are used in conjunction with Microsoft Information Protection for Microsoft 365 to help safeguard confidential information from unauthorized access and to enable more secure collaboration. “Intune has been rock-solid for us across Windows devices, iPads, iPhones, and Android phones,” says Wildmann. “We have a lot more power to control access, yet the security controls are easy for employees to use so they can get their work done.” 

These steps accompanied a deployment of more than 550 Microsoft Surface devices, with Windows Hello installed, for trial court administrators, assignment judges, and senior management. The IT department uses Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Application Proxy so that these employees benefit from highly secure access to internal resources when working remotely. “The Surface devices have been well-received, and they provide a lot of flexibility in terms of accessing files remotely,” says Wildmann. “Everyone now saves their files to OneDrive, so they can work on their Surface devices at home and safely access their work. It’s great to finally comply with a long-standing request from our employees.” 

“The leadership decision to invest in Enterprise Mobility + Security E5 has been critical to our successful efforts to operate remotely during COVID-19,” adds Judge Grant. “Microsoft Office 365 and enhanced security controls such as Office 365 Data Loss Protection and two-factor authentication have been extremely important in this transition.” 

Looking back on the last few months, McCarthy admits to being surprised at how much the New Jersey judiciary was able to accomplish in a remote environment—and how much less work they will have to do to catch up after COVID-19 subsides. “I thought if we got 40 percent of our work done, that would be good,” he says. “But it turned out to be more like 90 percent. That’s really a testament to how hard everyone worked to use Teams to keep the processes running to serve the citizens of New Jersey.” 

This success has everyone at the New Jersey judiciary reimagining legal services in the future. Judge Grant is convinced that the “new norm” will include a substantial number of proceedings conducted remotely. “We embraced Teams because of COVID-19,” he concludes. “But the positive experience for the citizens of New Jersey has taught us that Teams and virtual proceedings are here to stay.”

Find out more about New Jersey Courts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

“The Microsoft 365 tools for antivirus and mobile device management provide us with a better security platform for our endpoints. We switched from Symantec to Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection [ATP] on all desktops. We also migrated from AirWatch to Microsoft Intune for mobile device management.”

Ron Wildmann, Assistant Director, Technical services, New Jersey Courts

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