OASIS Litigant Portal Technical Committee (LP TC)

Many groups have devoted significant time and effort toward providing assistance of various kinds to litigants without representation. Numerous studies find a sizable unmet civil legal need. Organization-specific websites and portals publish a vast amount of information intended to help potential litigants overcome the barriers of cost and complexity. Yet, the need continues to outweigh the solutions by a significant margin.[1] Strategies to address this gap include, among many technology opportunities, development of statewide legal portals (often referred to as "litigant portals").

The purpose of the LP TC is to develop technical standards for the interfaces of litigant portal modules. It is unlikely that most organizations will be able to build a complete portal, so it is very important that modules created by different sources be able to interoperate. That approach potentially solves both scaling, flexibility and cost issues associated with full-scale portals. Litigant portals themselves offer an integrated solution to several core "access to justice" problems.

[1] "Building a Litigant Portal: Business and Technical Requirements," Tom Clarke, National Center for State Courts, November 2015, http://ncsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/accessfair/id/375.

The LP TC will produce specifications for data interoperation between Litigant Portal Modules as defined in the aforementioned "Building A Litigant Portal Business and Technical Requirements" report.[1] Such standards would support development and operation of a litigant portal by:

• defining structured interactions between modules in the portal,
• facilitate navigation between modules in the portal, and
• define interfaces with external partners and resources.

These specifications will collectively be referred to as the Litigant Portal Exchange (LPX) Specifications.

The LP TC may also produce non-normative content such as tutorials, usage guides, quick start guides and other documents that will assist the broader community in adopting the specifications.

The LP TC may establish liaisons with relevant organizations and committees in order to pursue alignment, interoperation with, and adoption of standards produced by the LP TC. The LPX Specifications shall align, interoperate with, and reuse components from the NIEM [2], the Open Referral Initiative [3], OASIS and other standards, as the LP TC deems appropriate.

[2] National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), https://www.niem.gov.
[3] Open Referral Initiative, https://openreferral.org.

Out of Scope

Functional standards for the portal modules themselves are out of scope. Most of the supporting data standards are also out of scope, since the project will broadly reuse appropriate existing data standards.

Maintenance Mode

Once the LP TC has completed work on a specific deliverable (whether "complete" means it has become an OASIS Standard, or simply a Committee Specification is left to the TC’s discretion), the TC will provide maintenance for that deliverable. The purpose of maintenance is to provide minor revisions to previously adopted deliverables to clarify ambiguities, inconsistencies, and obvious errors. Maintenance is not intended to enhance a deliverable or to extend its functionality. In addition to maintenance, the TC may choose to create new versions of specifications that support additional capabilities.

The LP TC plans to produce specifications for LPX version 1.0 within 12 months of its first meeting. Other contributions to the LP TC will also be considered for incorporation into the specification based on their merits.

The LP TC will accept as additional input issues and recommended changes from TC Members and others. Contributions will be accepted for consideration without any prejudice or restrictions and evaluated based on technical merit in so far as they conform to this charter.

The work product will consist of specifications for information exchange using XML.

Follow-on versions of the specification may be developed to address additional in-scope capabilities identified by the TC on a schedule to be defined by the TC.

The TC may produce such other non-standards track deliverables within the scope outlined above, such as tutorials or white papers to support the specification.

The TC will operate under the Non-Assertion IPR mode as defined in the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy.

All stakeholders involved in providing services to self-represented litigants (or potential litigants) are encouraged to participate in the LP TC:

• Courts
• State Bar associations
• Providers of legal services
• Providers of dispute resolution services
• Providers of self-help services
• Organizations responsible for creating and/or supporting portals that provide access to self-help services

The LP TC will use United States (U.S.) English as the language for conducting its operations.