A Friend of the Court

Growing up in Missouri with an interest in art and history, Michael Jaffe admits a career in the Northern California graphic arts scene wasn't his original plan.

"I just kind of fell into printing," quips the supervisor of the General Services Unit for the Judicial Council of California, in San Francisco.

After studying history at the University of Missouri, Jaffe headed west in the mid 1980s to attend graduate school at the University of California-Berekley. He took a job with a company called The Copy Factory, where he was responsible for document production for law firms.

"Over a short period of time I became a production manager working the graveyard shift," Jaffe recalls.

After asking the owner of the company for more responsibilities, he became involved with the marketing aspects of the company. This gave him familiarity with both the production and business sides of the company.

Printing was not totally foreign to Jaffe. His father, a professor and poet, started Bookmark Press in 1971, which was affiliated with the University of Missouri.

"So I grew up having a sense of the industry," Jaffe says.“Printing isn’t something I expected to go into but it certainly isn’t anything unfamiliar to me.”

Following stints at several commercial shops and the in-plants for Stanford University and UC-Berkeley, Jaffe began managing the Judicial Council's in-plant seven years ago. The all-digital shop has eight employees and 2,000 square-feet of production space.

The Judicial Council is the policy-making body of the California courts, the largest court system in the nation. The council is responsible for ensuring the consistent, independent, impartial and accessible administration of justice.

The in-plant is responsible for producing business meeting materials for the various council committees and educational materials for the more than 1,600 judges across the state.

The in-plant was originally a small office copy center, Jaffe explains. Before he arrived, the in-plant scanned 85 percent of its work. Over the past seven years, Jaffe has transitioned it to a digital workflow.

"Now we scan probably five percent of our work," Jaffe reports. "We have made great strides in that area." Jaffe says he has worked to update technology and train staff and customers on best practices.

The shop handles black-and-white work using a Xerox DocuTech 135 and a DocuTech 115. Last year, the in-plant installed a Xerox D125. A Canon imagePRESS C7000 color press was put into service five years ago. Jaffe also made several updates to the bindery.

Expansion Challenges

The state budget crisis in California has made equipment procurement a challenge, he admits.

"I have to be able to justify everything," Jaffe notes. "The color machine was easily justifiable. The eventual replacements of the DocuTechs should be easily justifiable, but right now they still have a lot of life."

A result of the budget problems has been a reduction in print volume at the in-plant. So Jaffe has branched out to offer digital and hard copy storage of state records, mailing and fulfillment, and maintenance of a proprietary database that keeps track of all the judges in the California state system.

Jaffe's in-plant is also responsible for warehousing all architectural drawings and blueprints for state courthouses. The shop can print black-and-white large-format work, and when it needs color large-format work, it doesn't have to go far.

"The Department of Justice in-plant is located right across the hall, so they will help out by printing large-format color when needed," he says, noting that the shops have a good working relationship.

Jaffe also accepts jobs from other state agencies in the building, as well as work from the state Supreme Court and California's First District Court of Appeals. He estimates the shop does $100,000 in insourcing business annually.

Jaffe believes there is a common thread from the academic world he came from before entering the printing industry and the challenges he faces today.

"The truth is that if you aren't interested in learning, you can't be in this industry," he proclaims, pointing at how the printing world has changed from when he started in the 1980s. "Every month something changes. And if you don't keep up, you fall behind."

Jaffe has more plans to keep the shop on the upswing in the future, including an idea to offer Web-to-print services to smaller county state courts. He notes that some of the larger county courts, like Los Angeles, have their own in-plants. But many of the 58 counties in the state do not have easy access to affordable printing services.

"I see it as being a service hub for the various state courts," Jaffe concludes.