A Canadian judge’s statements in court show the struggle to modernise the justice system is shared by both sides of the Atlantic.
Refusing counsel’s request to conduct a trial in paper, which would result in ten binders of documents, Judge Brown in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice expressed “profound frustration”. Recalling the music collection of 45 rpms he treasured as a youth, he said they had “gone the way of the Dodo bird” and would be unrecognisable to his grandchildren.
“Why should courts and lawyers be any different?” he said, in Bank of Montreal v Faibish.
“Paper must vanish from this court and, frankly, the judiciary cannot let the legal profession or our court service provider hold us back.”
In England and Wales, IT problems have beset the courts, particularly the Rolls Building, where a major IT project worth £9.5m had to be shelved in 2012.
The Ministry of Justice announced in May that Thomson Reuters has now been hired to instal a case management and electronic filing system at a cost of £5m. The new IT is due to go live at the end of 2015, in time for the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.
