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Ten-year digitalisation plan for courts could cut case costs by 20%

By January 20, 2020 No Comments

Programme costing about €112m would replace lever-arch files with computers

One of the odder sights down the Four Courts is a courtroom packed with barristers in their black gowns, and solicitors in their best suits, waiting their turn for a quick audience with an overburdened judge.

“Is your case ready to go ahead on the assigned date?” the judge will ask a barrister when his or her case is called. “We’re ready,” one barrister might say, only for the man or woman representing the other party to say there is still a problem.

Sometimes there can be three or four parties involved in a case, so there will be three or four barristers waiting in court, for up to an hour or more, for their two- or three-minute slot to discuss the filing of documents or some other procedural issue.

It is not unusual for there to be both solicitors and barristers in court for these brief discussions. Everyone involved will expect to be paid, and it is the client who will do the paying.

Court cases are very stressful for the parties involved. Yet it is not unknown for people to turn up with their legal teams on the morning they’ve been told their case is scheduled to begin, only to be told there is no judge available. Or to turn up to hear a reserved judgment being delivered, only to be told on the morning that it’s not ready. Again it is the client who ends up paying the cost.

A behavioural economist might suggest that if it was the legal profession that ended up out of pocket as a result of such inefficiencies, rather than garnering more fees from them, the system might have been improved a few decades ago.

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