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A pilot program in seven states is evaluating whether making digital recordings of case proceedings available online is useful for the public.

The committee on court administration and case management of the U.S. Judicial Conference recently voted in support of the program, meaning that it may soon be approved for use in all 50 states.  The Judicial Conference is set to vote on the matter on March 16.

The recordings are available through PACER, a service that gives users electronic access to case and docket information from federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts.

For eight cents per MP3 file, lawyers, judges, clients and others can download digital recordings of proceedings and listen to them whenever they choose.

“It’s a brand-new way of having transparency and access to federal court,” said J. Rich Leonard, a bankruptcy judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina who conceived the idea for the program. “You no longer have to be in the courtroom or go through a court reporter to get a transcript if you weren’t there.”

Leonard received permission to lead the two-year pilot program in 2007.

In addition to the bankruptcy court in North Carolina, the program is currently operating in bankruptcy courts in Alabama, Maine, New York and Rhode Island, as well as in U.S. District Courts in Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

In New York, the pilot program was implemented overnight when the General Motors and Chrysler’s bankruptcy cases came up last year.

“What you had there was people all over the country and world who couldn’t afford to go to New York and watch court, but were desperately interested in what happened, so it let them - in less than 24 hours - actually sit there and listen for themselves to what was happening in the courtroom and what the lawyers they hired were arguing,” said Leonard.

Last year, users downloaded 5,300 audio files from the bankruptcy courts and 1,500 files from the district courts, according to Wendell Skidgel, attorney adviser for the public access and records management division of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

That doesn’t count the Chrysler and GM cases, where 43 audio files were downloaded a total of 1,044 times, or the number of attorneys who contacted the office after the trial and asked for permission to use the MP3s on their personal websites, Skidgel said.

A study evaluating the effectiveness of the program has been completed but its findings cannot be released until after the Judicial Conference reviews it in March.

Another version of this article originally appeared in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, a sister publication of Lawyers USA.

Questions or comments can be directed to the news editor at: reni.gertner@lawyersusaonline.com

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