Speaking at a Law Society webinar on data and technology last week, Sir Geoffrey set out the direction of travel for civil justice. He advocated for an ‘integrated online dispute resolution’ system, or ‘single online funnel’, where anyone with a complaint or dispute can go to ‘a single front door that will direct them to the appropriate online dispute resolution process, whether that is mediation, arbitration, an ombudsman or the courts’.
The technology required was ‘hardly rocket science’, he said, but one problem is that it is difficult to gauge the scale of civil claims as the system is paper-based. He estimated that at least 3m civil claims were initiated each year in England and Wales.
Sir Geoffrey said it is ‘time to undertake a fundamental generational reform of the civil justice system’.
