Queen’s Bench Division turns electronic

That the civil courts are only now embracing widespread electronic working and filing is ‘sobering’, Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice, has said.

In a speech published this week but made at the launch of the electronic working and filing pilot in the Queen’s Bench Division (QBD) in March, Lord Burnett welcomed the extension of the pilot in the Rolls Building to the Royal Courts of Justice and said the modernisation was ‘long overdue’.

‘We must be the last organisation in the country to operate a paper-based system which for all intents and purposes has remained the same for many decades if not longer,’ he said.

‘Within a few years, if not months, I suspect that we will look back and wonder how on earth we managed for so long living in the past.’

Electronic filing in the QBD will become mandatory on 1 July, although a paper-based option will remain available for litigants in person.