Remote hearings from the lawyer’s perspective

The Bar Council report ‘A lens on justice: the move to remote justice’, published this week, looks at remote hearings from the perspective of legal professionals. It gathers HM Courts and Tribunals Service data from 2020 to early 2023, along with the results of five Bar Council surveys.

Hundreds of barristers shared their personal experience of what’s working and what’s not, including comments that ‘the criminal bar continues to shrink and this ensures access’, ‘more thoughtful listing is required’, and ‘remote hearings are excellent for routine or simple matters. They are less effective for lengthy, complex cases requiring extensive oral evidence.’

Currently, about one in four hearings is heard remotely, compared to 58% of hearings during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Barristers were broadly in favour of remote hearings—nearly half would like to see their use increase, although many argued that more procedural clarity was needed. More than a third experienced technical problems with the video platform in 2023 (an improvement on the 77% who did so in 2021). The report calls for investment to improve the infrastructure and administration of remote hearings.

Sam Townend KC, chair of the Bar, said: ‘The Bar Council is calling for greater consistency and predictability as to the use of remote hearings which would be of benefit to all court users. 

‘Remote hearings could be used more regularly where it is efficient to do so and can play a part in bearing down on court delays and backlogs. In this report, the profession has also set out where remote hearings are not working well or failing, hampering access to justice and productivity in the courts.

‘It is welcome news, then, that the senior judiciary has already started to “grasp the nettle” so far as the Crown Court is concerned. Some hearings, particularly those which dispose of a case or in which evidence is taken, are generally best done in person.

‘Meeting important public needs, such as reducing the court backlog, and the benefits of remote hearings to the profession should not, of course, be to the detriment of the justice being done and being seen to be done.’