Friday, June 30, 2017

MJI Publications

The MJI Publications Team continues to provide regularly-updated publications and improve its delivery of publications materials. What follows is a reader’s guide to understanding the MJI publications’ process.

Who We Are
The MJI Publications Team consists of eight members—the publications manager, three full-time research attorneys, one contract research attorney, a judicial education analyst, and two assistants.

What We Do
Update publications.  Three times per year (January, May, and September), the publications team updates all MJI benchbooks and quick reference materials (e.g. checklists, flowcharts, and tables).  “Updating” involves reviewing all case law and new/amended court rules or legislation, identifying the material that is relevant to a particular publication, determining where the new material should be placed in the publication, incorporating the new law into the publication, and taking several steps to finalize the book for online and CD dissemination.

Revise publications.  With the assistance of committees comprised of judges, court personnel, and other professionals, and the oversight of the publications manager, each attorney is responsible for completely revising their assigned publications on a rolling basis.  We are currently revising the Adoption Proceedings Benchbook, Contempt Benchbook, and Criminal Proceedings, Vol. 1.

Create and Distribute IMPACT.  One research attorney and the judicial education analyst are assigned to create IMPACT, a twice-monthly e-mail service that provides summaries of the most recent court and legislative activity.  These e-mails are distributed the second and fourth Monday of each month, and they are also available in podcast format.  The process is overseen by the publications manager, and the final product is distributed by the MJI assistants.  MJI invites all court staff to subscribe to IMPACT.

Respond to inquiries.  MJI attorneys are experts on the subject matter of their assigned publications and are available to respond to questions from judges, court personnel, and other state agencies concerning any legal issue related to the content of their respective publications.  As it relates to scoring the offense and prior record variables (felony sentencing), MJI has an attorney on staff who regularly receives and responds to questions from judges, court staff, and Department of Corrections staff, with the help of a two-person committee.  Feel free to e-mail MJI with any publication-related question at MJI-Info@courts.mi.gov.

Partner with other organizations. The MJI partners include:
·       The Institute of Continuing Legal Education (ICLE) (providing all Michigan judges with access to the ICLE online jury instructions and providing appropriate judges with CD versions of, as well as electronic access to, ICLE’s Family Law and Probate Benchbooks).
·       West Publishing (providing appropriate Michigan judges with a complimentary hard copy of the Sentencing Guidelines Manual).

Availability of publications:  By request, MJI distributes via CD its benchbooks and quick reference materials in PDF format every February, June, and October.  In addition, all MJI benchbooks and quick reference materials are available online.  The online versions of the benchbooks are available in both PDF (best for printing) and HTML (best for online viewing and mobile-friendly) formats; currently, quick reference materials are only available in PDF format.  Each benchbook and quick reference material contains active links to Michigan statutes, court rules, and other material available online, including other MJI materials.

The future:  You can expect MJI publications to continue improving the utility of the resources offered as the team learns more about the capabilities of the software used to create and format the benchbooks.  We are committed to providing the most useful resources to Michigan judges and court personnel, and we need your feedback to know what we are doing right and how we can improve.

Contact us:  Please let us know how current methods of format and delivery help or hinder your experience with MJI benchbooks and quick reference materials.  If you have any feedback about MJI publications, please contact Sarah Roth at 517-373-7444 or roths@courts.mi.gov.

Core Benchbooks

Quick Reference Material Topics