KINGMAN — Hearings will largely be temporarily paused in many courtrooms in the local legal community as scores of employees engage in annual education and training activity. COJET will unfold Wednesday through Friday in Kingman.
“COJET stands for the Committee on Judicial Education and Training. It’s mostly designed to help court staff, probation staff and clerk staff with training we are required to have,” said Human Resources Technician senior Sherry Hammontree, COJET chair this year and last. She said 200-250 people will be participating.
“It is for employees from Bullhead, Havasu and Kingman,” Hammontree said. “It’s for Superior Court, Justice Court, Municipal Court, Probation, the Clerk’s Office, and then we also invite some outside agencies to attend as well.”
The Arizona Game and Fish Department, for example, provided instruction last year regarding how agency legal matters may intersect with the court community. Tribal nations have been invited this year.
Mohave County Superior Cour Human Resources Manager Nicole Aragon said COJET is one avenue for employees to work to acquire their 16 hours of annual training mandated by the Arizona Supreme Court through the Administrative Office of the Courts.
The first two days of COJECT primarily involve break out education sessions.
“We have a matrix that has the entire course schedule for all three days and the employees can choose to attend whichever sessions or topics they’d like,” Aragon said. “We try to do some general topics such as leadership and teamwork. I do a preventing unlawful discrimination course, also FMLA, so employees know their rights…And then it goes a little more specific into courts where we have the Administrative Office of the Courts coming from the Supreme Court to teach.”
Presiding Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steve Moss said COJET has helped staff keep up with always evolving technology.
“A few years ago we were rolling out case lines, which is digital evidence. And then the year before that we were rolling out ZOOM, which is the video presentation of cases,” Moss said. “So, every year there’s something new and we get the education we need to our staff doing that. But there are some common things that come through year after year. I think this will be the second year for example that Megan McCoy will be teaching a trial advocacy class, assisted by some other local judges”
Hacking threat and external interference ins data protection is annually prominent.
“Computer security, I think that’s a class that probably gets updated almost every year,” Hammontree said. “Between that and AI, we’re always hearing something new for that.”
Aragon said COJECT is always looking to explore opportunities for outside agencies to become involved in the annual training program going forward.
