ENFIELD, CT -- November 29, 2006 -- When the State Supreme Court of Connecticut hands down a decision, they turn to the Commission of Official Legal Publications (or COLP) to publish their findings. The Connecticut Law Journal is a weekly recap (up to 500 pages) of the court decisions handed down for that week and is not only distributed throughout the state, but throughout the country to a weekly circulation of about 4,000 (including local and national major press outlets). COLP is also responsible for printing over 600 different forms, (including arrest warrants, all police and court documentation, clerk forms, civil documentation, family legal documents, housing, juvenile, probate court, state and city police schedules and documentation, appellate court papers, and much more). While as much as 80% of the printing is black and white, COLP is also responsible for producing 4-color flyers, brochures, and yearly directories. As a government agency, the printing office offsets costs by selling the publications they produce to legal offices and legislative branches in other states. All funds generated are returned to the state's general funds. According to Production Supervisor Gary Salisbury, COLP actually generates enough revenue to offset all direct costs for the state of Connecticut by producing quality documentation and promotional tools that other states want to purchase. CTP comes to COLP Recently, COLP purchased and installed their first CTP platesetter, courtesy of a local graphic arts dealer. According to Salisbury, account representative Mark Ferreria and director of EPP sales Karl Adelman of The Tripp Company were instrumental in not only cost justifying the purchase, but demonstrating the production benefits of CTP in their operation. Eventually, COLP installed the department's first platesetter, an ECRM MAKO 8. "Direct CTP workflows are new to this department, but after just two weeks we were fully operational," said Salisbury, a 21-year veteran of the CT office, who has been managing the operation for the past four years. "In eliminating imagesetting and implementing the MAKO 8 workflow, we've cut 50% in backend production time, especially when we do hard volume books. When we do forms, where we bring PDF's into the Miles system, we're cutting 75% to 80% off make-ready time. I thought we would be farther behind on the learning curve, but we're already in full production. With CTP, we're gaining days on many large-format projects." Workflow Their production workflow is based upon a Miles 33 pagination system, the same system used by the US Supreme Court. Text is created on the Miles 33 (due of their security features), imported from the court reporters office network, and ported into an Ultimate Impostrip system, which creates the 8-up pages. These pages are then fed to the Harlequin 7 RIP and imaged on the MAKO 8 CTP platesetter. The 25-person department (one shift with 11 people on the shop floor), produces about 200,000 law journals, 250,000 envelopes and over 7 million forms per year, as well as another 12,000 hard bound books. Notes Salisbury, "Every bit and byte of information we receive must be treated as highly sensitive for security purposes and treated with the utmost of secrecy due to our work with the state supreme court. I'm proud of our ability to meet deadlines. We have prepress, printing, binding, shipping, warehousing, typesetting, in the 8,000 square-foot operation. We produce and ship in a JIT [Just in Time] format. Because we print and mail the docket [the schedule for all courts in the state], having reliable tools in our production workflow is critical."