The Probate Section: Leading the Way With Cobarnet

• Publication year: 1990
• Pages: 1317
• Citation: Vol. 19 No. 7 Pg. 1317

19 Colo.Law. 1317 Colorado Lawyer 1990.

1990, July, Pg. 1317. The Probate Section: Leading the Way with COBARNet

---

1317

Vol. 19, No. 7, Pg. 1317

The Probate Section: Leading the Way with COBARNet

by Joseph G. Hodges, Jr

Avariety of electronic telecommunications opportunities currently are available to attorneys via personal computers and modems. These include searchable databases (such as WEST-LAW and LEXIS), information and communication "bulletin boards," electronic mail (or "E-Mail") and facsimile transmissions.(fn1) Many of these opportunities are now accessible through COBARNet, the Colorado Bar Association's ("CBA") new electronic telecommunications network.

In this issue of The Colorado Lawyer, the Law Office Management column [page 1321] and the CBA Law Office Management Department Update [page 1324] discuss electronic telecommunications and COBARNet in general. This article details the steps that the Computerized Probate Committee ("Committee") of the CBA Probate and Trust Law Section ("Probate Section") already has taken to make COBARNet an exciting and effective tool for attorneys practicing in this area.

Probate: The First Section to Establish COBARNet Menus

According to the article published in the Law Office Management column this month, the databases and bulletin boards that currently are available on COBARNet "offer information from any CBA section or committee that has placed information on the system." The CBA Probate Section, through the efforts of the Committee, has become the first CBA Section to establish a full set of menus on COBARNet. These menus will lead users of the COBARNet system to probate-specific, searchable databases and electronic communications bulletin boards.

The probate databases and bulletin boards currently contain limited, selected data and searchable cases, both of which are being made available to COBARNet subscribers on a pilot basis. There are two primary reasons for this. First, by offering only limited, selected information at this time, the Probate Section can monitor the system's usage while avoiding the need for access fee charges to COBARNet users. Eventually, due to the cost of storing data online, it may become necessary to institute user access charges to help cover these costs. However, it is anticipated that any such charges will be nominal (in the range of from $1 to $5 per access) in comparison with access charges of other electronic networks. Further, the more users there are, and the more frequently a given database is accessed by those users, the lower the access charges will have to be.

Secondly, the Probate Section wants to encourage all COBARNet...