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Contents
1 Accessing the System
Accessing the System
Desktop Icon
All users of the system should have a “CMS” Icon added to their standard desktop.
To Access the system, just double this icon. This will open the Livelink Case Management System at the Enterprise Menu as shown below:
Browser URL
As the system is accessed via your standard web browser you can also add a “CMS” entry to your browser Favorites. The following URL can be used for this purpose:
Or the Initial Livelink Enterprise Home Page URL can be added to the browser favorites using the Internet Explorer “Add to Favorites” option on the Favorites menu.
System Features
The Enterprise Menu
The Enterprise Menu shown below is the entry point to the system:
The top section of the page provides a number of links to the case areas.
To add a case for either of the courts select the appropriate link to add a Civil or Criminal case.
The “Featured Items” area provides additional links to other areas of the system.
This includes Corporate Records, Lists ( Court Listings ), the Intranet and a Justices Shared Area.
Adding New Cases
The links to add cases can all be found on the main Enterprise menu.
Select the required link such as Add New Civil Case, by clicking on it.
This will start the Add Case Wizard.
Enter the Name of the Case and Description as required.
Click on Next to continue.
The next screen that is displayed will provide access to all the case file data entry screens.
Some of these fields are mandatory as identified by the 
icon.
You will therefore need to select the stage as this field is not defaulted.
Select PTA or Appeal as appropriate. You can enter all the form data if you wish at this stage but it may be safer to create the case file first before continuing with the data entry as any issues with your PC might loose the data you have input before the case file is created.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen and select Finish to create the electronic case file.
Wait for the system to finish creating the file.
Click on Continue to complete the process.
The case file Portal page will be opened after
Inputting the Form Data to the Case File
To return to the data input pages click on the edit icon shown below:
This will return you to the “Case” data input screen, from where you can access the other data input tabs to enter all the data from the Form 1.
After input data on each tab scroll down to click on the Save button before continuing to the next data entry page.
If you click out of a tab without first saving any changes you will be presented with the warning shown below:
To return to the Case File Portal Screen you will need to click on the case file function arrow, shown below:
Select Open from the function menu that appears and this will return you to the Case File Portal Screen.
Adding Scanned Forms and Bundles to the Case File
If you have scanned the paper copy of form 1 or have case bundles submitted with form on CD/DVD these can be imported into the case file documents area. Make a note of the location of the scanned image on your network drive or use the scanner to email the file to yourself.
To add the scanned image of the form, scroll down the Case File Portal screen and click on the Court Forms link.
To add the scanned image file click on the Add Document button.
Click on Browse to select the image file from the network drive location it has been saved to.
Locate the file and click on Open to return to the Add Document screen.
Enter a Name for the document and Click on Next to continue with the import process.
Select the appropriate Document Type, File Date and Filed By values.
Click on Finish to complete the import process.
The scanned image file will have been saved into the Court Forms document folder.
The same process can be repeated for the bundles if these have been provided electronically.
Drafting Standard Letters for the Parties on the Case
The system has a wide range of pre-formatted latter templates for use at various stages in the case. These templates will pre-fill a number of sections of the letter with data from the case file but other sections of the letter will need to be manually finalised by the user. These will all be highlighted in yellow to assist you with this process.
To draft a letter you need to navigate into the correct document folder that the document should be created in. This would normally be the Correspondence folder.
Once you are in the correct folder, Click on Add Document to create a new letter.
You will be presented with the following wizard screen.
Scroll down and use the Radio buttons to select the template you want to use for your letter.
The file name for the document will default to the name of the Template file so you may need to alter it as 2 document with he same file name are not allowed in to exist in the same folder. Consider adding a date or some other Suffix if this becomes an issue.
To continue with the creation of the document, click on the Next button.
You can alter the default Document Metadata as required.
To continue with the creation of the document, click on the Next button.
The system will take the selected template and merge this with data from the case where possible. The next screen will display the data that will be merged.
You will often be prompted to choose the recipient of the letter or when ever there are multiple choices as to what data is included in the letter. Click on the appropriate radio button as required.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen.
Click on Finish to generate the draft letter.
The generated word document will however sometimes contain sections of text that need to be manually completed. These will be highlighted in Yellow.
Close the word document when you have finished your edits and printed a copy.
You will be prompted with the following dialogue.
Click Yes if you have finished your edits or No if you need to return to the document at a later stage.
The document will have been saved in to the correspondence folder.
If you need to amend the letter click on the function menu down arrow to the right of the document. Do not just open the document by clicking on the file name. Any edits made to the document when opened for viewing will not be automatically saved as a new version.
To open the document for editing you must select the Edit option from the function menu. After you have made your edits a new version of the document will be created.
Drafting Free Format letters for the Parties on the Case
The system includes an "Address Labels" and a number of "Top and Tail" letter templates that will create an empty letter with the addressee and salutation sections pre-filled.
To access these click on the Add Document button and then select General Templates from the list at the top of the screen. Continue through the screens as described above. A blank letter will be created as shown below, with the required addressee information pre-filled.
Printing Labels for the Parties on the Case
The system includes a labels template that can be used to create a set of 14 labels to file with the paper case file for use throughout the case.
These can be selected from the General Templates in the Add Document wizard.
Ensure the correct label stationary is in the printer before the labels are printed.
Windows and Office Integration Software
Livelink Explorer
The Livelink Explorer module provides direct access to the case files and document folders via a browsable hierarchy of folders.
You can use windows “Cut and Paste” or “Drag and Drop” to save files, such as the scanned image of Form 1, directly into the case file document folders.
You will be prompted to provide the document's metadata when you do this.
Outlook Integration
The system will add a Livelink entry to your Outlook navigation area. You can expand this to find any of the case you are working on, to save an email to the correspondence folder for example.
Word Integration
The System will add a Livelink menu and toolbar to your Word menus.
To open a document from with the case files or other areas of Livelink either click on the Open From Livelink menu icon or click on the Livelink menu item and then Click on the Open From Livelink menu item.
The following browse screen will be opened:
Double click on the server name to open an expandable hierarchy of folders on the system.
Navigate to the folder / case file folder that contains the document you wish to open/edit.
You can also save newly created documents direct into the Livelink system
To do this select Save as to Livelink so you can navigate to a case file or other system folder to save your document into.
Browse Cases
The Browse Cases Icon is available from within the Featured Items area of the Enterprise Home Page.
Click on the icon to access the browsable set of case.
You will be presented with a screen that provides access to the cases via a number of different groupings, such as by Court, Stage and year. For example to access UKSC cases click on the UKSC link.
This will then ask you to pick the stage or year.
You will then be presented with a list of cases that meet the criteria you have selected.
You can alter the selection by selecting the alternative groupings from the navigation box to the left of the screen. To open any case file just click on the name of the case.
Cases Assigned to Me
This facility is designed to be used by the Justices. It will list any un-completed cases that they have been assigned to each Justice at the PTA or Appeal Stage.
Justices can access this list by clicking on the Icon.
The Cases Assigned to me list will be displayed as shown above. To open any case file just click on the name of the case.
Lists
The Lists area of the system is used to hold the court listing for each term. These are word documents that allow the Justices to be assigned to cases for UKSC and JCPC in a way that ensures there are no conflicts of time commitments.
Click on the List icon to access these documents.
To view or edit the List for the term click on the document name.
This will open the word document holding the cases that are listed for the term with 1 week per page being displayed.
Reports
The system includes a number of management reports that can all be accessed from the Reports area.
To access the reports click on the Reports Icon.
This will display the list of different reports.
Click on the Report you wish to view. Some reports, such as “Cases Assigned by Justice”, will run immediately and present the results as shown below:
Others, such as “R01 - Cases Issued”, will present you with a report parameter input screen as shown below:
To run these reports select the date parameters that you require and click on the Run Report button.
The data returned by the report can be exported for analysis in an Excel spreadsheet.
To do this click on the Export button at the top of the report display screen.
You will be prompted to Open or Save the exported data.
If you click on Open, Excel will be opened with the report data as shown below:
Search
The Livelink system includes a powerful free text search capability. This means it can find documents and cases based on any of the text in the document or on any of the case file screens.
Enterprise Search
The search facility can be accessed from the top of most screens in the system.
To initiate a search enter the free text you wish to search for.
When in a specific folder area such as UKSC Civil Cases the search defaults to a “From Here” type of search.
You can alter the default to Enterprise as required.
The search results will be displayed as shown below:
Documents Area Filters
As the number of documents in the correspondence folder on the case file grows it may be helpful to use the filter facility to reduce the number of documents that are displayed.
To filter the list so it only shows documents filed by one party select the party from the Filed By drop down list and the displayed documents will be filtered to only show the required documents.
Documents Area Sort Order
You can also use the sort facility to display the document in different sort orders.
To sort the list on a particular column you can just click on the column heading. If you click a second time the sot order will be reversed.
The blue pointer triangle
will indicate if a sort order has been selected. This can be seen next to the column header label
.
Document Management
Corporate Records
The system includes a series of folders that will be used to store corporate records.
My Workspace
Each user is provided with a “My Workspace” document repository area.
To access your own workspace area click on My Workspace in the top navigation area.
The will open the following screen:
You can add or import new documents to this area or you can create new sub-folders as required.
Creating a new Document
You can add documents to any area of the system.
To do this, click on the Add Document button in the top navigation area.
You can either click on Browse to import an existing document or you can create a new document based on one of the system templates by clicking on the appropriate radio button. Not that it is good practice to alter the file name of the template to add a date or some other text to make the file name unique within the area.
If you attempt to create a template based document without altering the file name the following error will be displayed.
Click on Return to Wizard to resolve this by altering the name of the file.
Edit the file name to make it unique and then click on Next to continue with the creation of the template based document.
Editing a Document
Viewing Previous Versions of a Document
The system maintains multiple versions of any word document held in any of the system or case file folders.
To view these versions select Properties > Versions from the document function menu.
A list of document versions will then be displayed.
Frequently Asked Questions
This section contains a number of Frequently Asked Questions and their answers.
What format should I use for scanned correspondence?
Scanning of received correspondence is performed using the multi-purpose devices that can scan, print and photocopy. The scanning software is set to save the output of the scan as a PDF file.
How do I save the scanned file into the case file?
You can save the scanned file to the default network fileserver folder or you can also get the file emailed to yourself. The Livelink explorer software can then be used to save the file into the case file correspondence folder see section “3.1 - Livelink Explorer” for more details.
How do I create a PDF document from a word document?
All user workstations have access to PDF creation software via the windows printers. Open the original word document that you wish to convert and select Print command in File menu of your application to bring up Print dialog box.
Then select CutePDF Writer as the Printer to print (DO NOT select "Print to file" option).
You will get a Save As dialog box prompted for saving created PDF file.
Select a folder to Save in and enter a File name, then click on Save.
Go to that folder to find your PDF file.
You can also request that you are provided with the more elaborate Adobe Acrobat software, which is a catalogue item. This will be required for Judgments and Press Summaries as the document properties will need to be set to include the hand down date, case id and case name for use with the website search engine.
How do details of the cases get published on the website?
The system includes an automated export of case information that runs every night. The case will not be transferred until the “Case Details Approved for Publication to Website” field has been set to “Yes”. This will be done by the Registrar. The case will appear in the Current Cases area of the website form the day after this flag is set. The case will be automatically moved to the Decided Cases area on the day after the Judgement is handed down.
The Judgment for my case has been handed down but it has not appeared in the decided case list?
The system will automatically publish the Judgment and Press Summary files within the Decided Cases area of the web site from the day after the hand-down date. If either of these files are not present, on the case file, the transfer will not be performed. The system will re-check for these files until they are both present and then they will be published to the website.
Will Judgments appear on the website as soon as they are handed down in court?
For Judgments and Press Summaries to be present on the website on the day of Judgment Hand Down, the web publishing team will need to manually publish a “Today's Judgments” page within the “What's New” area of the website.
Why is the system asking me to save my edited letter to a local folder on my PC
If you click on a document to edit it you have not initiated a proper edit session for the document. Clicking on a document will open it in a display mode but word will allow you to modify the document. If you have made a lot of changes save the document locally and then add it back in to the system as a new version.
You should always select the Edit option from the document function menu to make changes to a document. The system will then automatically save your changes into a new version when you have finished the changes.
Supreme Court Case Management System User Guide |
CMS User Guide v0 3 |
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