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The World's 10 Best Court Web Sites
For the 11th year running, Justice Served announced its annual awards for the Top 10 Court Websites in the world. Justice Served is a consulting firm that provides services and training to courts in management and technology. It looked at thousands of court Web sites and evaluated them based on criteria that included their functionality, ease of use and appearance.
In evaluating functionality, Justice Served gives higher grades to sites that allow users to perform court business online, without having to appear in person at the courthouse. It gives "extra credit" to sites that are geared toward the public, as opposed to attorneys or other regular users of court services.
Based on these criteria, this year's best court sites are:
- Superior Court of California, County of Orange, cited for its "terrific organization and navigation."
- Colorado State Judicial Branch, described as a site where "e-court functionality is front and center."
- State Court of Chatham County Georgia, a site "chock-full with e-dockets, e-tickets, e-fines and even e-probation."
- Singapore Subordinate Courts, a site whose features include e-ADR.
- Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, noted for its "particularly useful restraining and protective order content."
- Courts Service of Ireland, a site that not only provides court calendars online, but makes them readable on PDAs.
- Iowa Judicial Branch,a site that offers "a full array of online services including dockets, payments and jury services."
- Spokane County District Court, a site that shows this to be "truly the people's court."
- U.S. District Court, District of Maryland, a stand-out among federal courts for its "simple, straightforward organization."
- Alabama's Legal Information Network, a portal that is valuable "for lawyer and litigant alike."
The Justice Served blog adds an interesting footnote to this year's awards. When the firm first started ranking court sites in 1999, it found 300 of them. By last year, the number of court sites grew to some 4,000. This year, however, Justice Served could find only 3,000, a significant drop from just a year earlier. Its explanation: "This leads us to the conclusion that court websites went through substantial consolidation last year."
[Hat tip to Kate Bladow at technola for the pointer to the awards.]
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 13, 2009 at 12:15 PM | Permalink
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