Solutions for the Court

Bringing Courts into the Digital Age
aiSMARTBENCH® by Mentis Technology brings an easy-to-use electronic docket to your courtroom.

Unprecedented times have forced courts to re-examine virtual courtrooms. Courts are realizing that a connected court is more than just an online court session — it’s about connecting the court to all stakeholders.

Most digital court solutions are awkward and clunky to use, often requiring manipulation of a case file in pdf format with several steps to eSigning and eFiling. aiSMARTBENCH by Mentis Technology is a simpler solution for managing the court.

Now Mentis Technology has created aiCALENDAR to share the calendar to all stakeholders and make life easier.

In addition, Mentis offers two products focused on automating many of the tasks involved with indexing case documents and redacting them so they are available for public access. These products work hand-in-hand with your existing CMS/DMS solutions:

aiINDEX® Auto-indexing to transform scanned documents into usable content. Reduces data entry costs and increases productivity.
aiREDACT™ Auto-redaction, a rules-based, expert system that masks personal information such as social security number, date of birth and email address from your case documents.

Making Life Easier…

For Judges

Judges do so much more than hear cases. They actively research prior records and case precedent in similar cases to make the best-informed decision possible. aiSMARTBENCH and aiCALENDAR help judges:

Prepare:

Open my docket for tomorrow
Select a case for review from that docket
Bring the proposed motion into the Document Viewer
Grab a section of the motion for future reference
Perform online research, add it to my research notes
Add secure annotations to the document

aiSMARTBENCH delivers a complete picture of each case. It consolidates information from any database, whether from another jurisdiction or court type.

Search and Discovery: our built-in WorkSpaces feature is the most sophisticated search engine on the market.

Preside:

Dynamically manage my calendar
Quickly access the case, see key points
Full-text search across all documents in the case
Make notes on the case
Review related cases
Go to the next case

aiSMARTBENCH is easy to use, so it doesn’t get in the way while you’re in the courtroom.

eSign:

Generate an order, update it and edit it with a simple pen stroke
Click to eSign the order and route it accordingly
Batch eSign orders in a Pending folder

Manage the Caseload:

Easily take a case under advisement, assign it a date and an action
Search by case, filter by case type or judge
Daily reminder work queue with documents and action dates

Manage the Calendar:

aiCALENDAR provides details of all calendar events
It allows judges to standardize information attorneys provide when scheduling
It gives seamless access to cases straight from the calendar
Launch the web conferencing app directly from the calendar
Customize views and preferences

For Clerks

Clerks are caught in the middle. They’re responsible for transitioning their courts to the 21st century, but change can be difficult. aiSMARTBENCH and aiCALENDAR by Mentis Technology give you the benefits of a digital courtroom without the pain.

This is a huge leap forward. Mentis is revolutionizing how the courts work. Plus we’ll save an estimated $667,000 per year.“ – Adair Cotton, fmr Chief Deputy of Courts and IT, Santa Rosa County, Florida.

Unlike other eBench solutions, aiSMARTBENCH was designed from the ground up with the direct help of judges, so it works the way judges want to work. All other solutions (judicial modules dependent on a particular CMS) are afterthoughts, built on top of a solution designed for the clerk. While a CMS and a Judicial Tool share the same set of information, they are designed for different purposes. The CMS is good at entering detailed data with business rules and workflow but is not so good searching through document-intensive cases or presenting multiple cases and multiple documents simultaneously. Without having to make any changes to the CMS, the clerk can offer the judge a tool that efficiently performs full-text searches across all documents in a case and provides the judge with one-stop-shopping for all their judicial needs. In addition, aiSMARTBENCH can straddle multiple CMS systems and aggregate the judge’s calendar and present a single interface into their data.

The savings potential of a paper-free solution such as aiSMARTBENCH is significant. An internal audit in Manatee County found that by being fully electronic (all court customers filing and accessing court documents electronically) the Manatee Clerk would realize cost savings approaching 1 million dollars a year. aiSMARTBENCH eliminates the barrier for judges to adopt the “paper-free” technology in the fast-paced court room and outperforms the traditional courtroom incumbent, hand-delivered paper files.

Unlike other court solutions, aiSMARTBENCH was built from the perspective of the judge. Only after intensive listening to the needs of the judge as well as other key courtroom stakeholders did Mentis begin developing aiSMARTBENCH.

Because judges embrace aiSMARTBENCH as their judicial tool, clerks:

Can eliminate managing and maintaining files (no more paper files necessary!)
Provide a better mechanism for clerks and judges to collaborate on eFiled pleadings
Streamline their judicial processes without having to make changes to the CMS
Provide a mechanism for the court clerk and judicial assistant to work in tandem with the judge – automating the capture of in-courtroom data, the generation of court orders and the automatic filing and routing of electronically signed orders

For IT

Our court solutions are designed to easily connect into your CMS and can connect the judge to multiple CMS systems, presenting a single interface to the data. Mentis does all the heavy lifting when it comes to mapping to your data. All IT needs to do is provide Mentis with access to the data, procure the hardware as needed, validate the assumptions up front and work with Mentis on a final acceptance testing plan. No need to staff up or allocate weeks of time. With just a few hours here and there, you can easily support this very tried and true tool for judges.

Because aiSMARTBENCH is designed specifically for judges, it:

Delivers on ease-of-use which results in court-wide adoption of the solution
Allows the user or business analyst to easily configure the system to the preferences of the judge without IT intervention

When it comes to administration of the system, aiSMARTBENCH has built-in modules to make the IT role easier by providing:

A status monitoring system as part of the web application layer to monitor the health of the internal components
A mechanism to monitor all server side processes
Automatic, one-touch installation to client machines.

Security is not an afterthought for Mentis; but a fundamental component of every stage of the process.

All communications between aiSMARTBENCH clients and the county’s web server are secured with transport level security.
The data is always sent using bank level encryption.
Strong authentication techniques are available including Active Directory.
Bank-Level security practices including encryption, auditing, logging and proactive monitoring are native features of the system.
Secure remote access to aiSMARTBENCH is achieved by limiting external access to the aiSMARTBENCH web servers, which form an isolation barrier between the potentially hostile external network and the sensitive resources such as the existing CMS/DMS and court Judicial Information Warehouse.

For Attorneys

With aiCALENDAR it’s easy for attorneys and case participants to stay connected and collaborate with the court calendar system. Without having to make a phone call, attorneys can:

• View today’s docket and peruse the weekly docket
• Locate an available hearing date
• Determine the court’s guidelines for scheduling
• Collaborate with opposing counsel to identify an agreeable hearing date for their clients
• Finalize and secure a court date
• Signal to the judge how much time should be allotted for the case
• Determine whether a hearing is virtual and, if so, have instant access with a virtual link

Bringing Courts into the Digital Age