Gold standard in court documentation.

In a region known for technology innovation, the City of Seattle prioritizes digital transformation. The government implemented a workplace modernization strategy that involved migrating operations to the cloud and naming Adobe Acrobat Sign as a preferred partner to facilitate e-signatures for paperless workflows. But the court system remained highly paper-based, with attorneys and judges typically filling out motions, orders, and other documents by hand, signing them in person, and using carbon copies to distribute documents to all parties.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the courts quickly adopted social distancing strategies, meeting over video from safe locations. As papers could no longer be signed in person, the chief bailiff for the Seattle Municipal Court system reached out to Chris Smith, Electronic Signature Administrator for the City of Seattle, about whether the courts could use Acrobat Sign to facilitate contactless paperwork and keep the municipal courts running.

Margaret Mahoney, Senior Assistant City Prosecutor for the Seattle City Attorney's Office, supported by Smith, developed a pilot for digital courtroom workflows in just three weeks. The system has continued to mature over the years, with Acrobat Sign, Microsoft Power Automate, and Microsoft SharePoint combining to support hybrid and in-person courtrooms to this day.

The criminal division of the Seattle City Attorney’s Office has since won high praise for its modern, digital approach to documentation. “I’ve had defense attorneys tell me that Seattle is the gold standard for court ruling documents in the area,” says Mahoney. It’s hard to believe that just three years ago, Seattle’s courts were using carbon copies.

Increasing convenience of court documentation

The King County Jail courtroom started piloting the digital workflows in early 2020. Prosecutors would fill out forms after custody hearings and submit them for e-signature from defense attorneys and judges. Once signed, the document would automatically be emailed to all signers and an administrator who would archive the completed document.

The digital workflow allows attorneys, defendants, and judges to participate in hearings from anywhere, maintaining safe distances while completing all necessary paperwork in minutes. “Such a big change to existing workflows can be difficult, but Margaret stepped in to oversee change management with regular training sessions for her colleagues,” says Smith. “We also held weekly technical meetings where we talked about how to make the process better, continually refining our workflows and templates.”

The digital process soon expanded across all courtrooms, resulting in hundreds of workflows depending on the types of cases and parties who needed to be notified for each document. To manage documents more efficiently, Smith used Microsoft Power Automate to connect the documentation workflow with Microsoft SharePoint.

Data is extracted from signed forms, and the documents are automatically renamed in a standard format and saved in the appropriate courtroom library in SharePoint. If bailiffs or court clerks need to look up documents, they can find everything they need in a central location, rather than trying to sort through thousands of emails.

“Most people are already very active in SharePoint, so using the same system to access all of the documents they need is much more convenient,” says Mahoney. “We complete around 1,800 documents per month, or 21,700 documents per year. Since documents were three pages long on average and we were working with carbon copies, that’s a lot of paper. By eliminating more than 250,000 pieces of paper, we’ve reduced our carbon footprint for court documentation by 90.7%.”

The Attorney’s Office also switched to Acrobat Sign web forms. The web forms make documents much more accessible, available at any time through the City of Seattle website. Because web forms can have multiple participants, all parties can fill out their corresponding portions of the form before signing off on the document.

“The Seattle Municipal Court system has officially gone paperless with the Adobe and Microsoft apps,” says Mahoney. “Switching from paper to digital forms has made systems and information more accessible to everyone — judges, clerks, prosecutors, defense attorneys, defendants, victims, and witnesses — which benefits everyone working within the court system.”

Supporting faster, streamlined court processes The Attorney’s Office continues to improve its workflow. The next steps include adding documents with text tagging and XML mapping, as well as integrations with Microsoft 365, which will allow for even more collaboration and fewer errors and delays when filling out forms.

“People who work with the Attorney’s Office for the first time assume that we’ve been working with digital workflows for many years because it seems so intuitive,” says Mahoney. “Adobe and Microsoft have allowed us to become the gold standard for court documentation in King County, with improved access to court processes and documents for all.”

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