The newest acquisition by Texas-based government technology seller Tyler Technologies aims to bring more automation — and AI efficiency — to that space, one of the engines that keeps local, state and federal courts working.
Tyler has bought Computing System Innovations, or CSI, an Orlando-based firm founded in 1987 that now sells artificial intelligence-based automation, redaction and indexing services for courts, recorders, attorneys and others.
Tyler did not disclose terms of the deal.
CSI’s more than 80 U.S. clients include the Supreme Court of Virginia; New York City; Tarrant County, Texas; the state of Iowa and the U.S. Army.
Tyler has worked with CSI for more than a decade and had several mutual customers, said Brian McGrath, president of Tyler’s Courts and Justice Division, in an interview with Government Technology.
“We respect the depth of [CSI’s] knowledge in the legal documentation space, especially in legal redaction,” he said.
Legal redaction refers to protecting such information as banking details and the names of juveniles before court documents are posted for public view. To digitally display those documents, workers are typically required to manually redact sensitive information, a speed bump in the larger process.
Failures to protect such information can create security risks and controversies as more records move online.
Manual data management also happens in other important parts of the court documentation process, even in the simplest cases, McGrath said. For instance, the back end of court management systems — the parts even attorneys don’t encounter — involves often unique codes and other data that essentially serve as the steering wheels for legal documents, determining their path to public release and transparency.
CSI stood as an attractive acquisition target because of its long experience in handling those tasks, and for how it uses AI to bring more speed and efficiency to the work, he said.
The company’s AI basically studies how a particular court system handles its documents and case management workflows and then comes up with ways to automate it. While the federal court system abides by one case management standard, he said, the state courts are “only about 80 percent congruent,” with differences also at the county and local levels.
“We have seen great demand from the public sector — and courts specifically — for AI-powered document automation that significantly reduces manual labor of document review and data entry,” said Henry Sal, president and CEO of CSI, in the statement announcing the deal.
CSI’s 30 or so full-time workers, including management, now work for Tyler as part of its Courts and Justice Division.
Longer term, Tyler could use CSI’s AI expertise for other verticals including Municipal and Schools, Property and Recording Solutions, and Platform Solutions. But Tyler doesn’t plan to rush anything, and for now is focused on helping CSI “mature and grow” before deciding how to potentially transfer CSI’s technology into other product lines, McGrath said.
That’s “something we will be doing in a very methodical way,” he said.
