The use of technology in the courts

• Author: Lord Justice Brooke
• Position: Judge of the Court of Appeal for England and Wales
• Pages: 169-184

THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE COURTS

LORD JUSTICE BROOKE*

Ilast came to Dublin to talk about technology in the Courts in

1998. By that time not very much had happened in my jurisdiction.

Back-office systems called CREST and CASEMAN had been

installed in all the Crown Courts and in all the county courts to help

court staff handle court business more efficiently. There was also a

computerised bulk process centre at Northampton which handled

the claims of a few verylarge creditor companies by helping them to

issue, process and obtain default judgments electronically. The gas

companies would use it, for example, when people did not pay their

gas bill. So far as the judges were concerned, a judicial technology

project called JUDITH provided about 400 full-time judges with

laptop computers and software, including communications software,

to go with them. Apart from a few freestanding back office systems

in specialist courts, and a communications system for civil servants,

that was about all.

Towards the end of 1998 sanction was obtained for the provision

of 1,000 modernlaptop computers to judges. The specification was

superior to that of the old JUDITH laptops, and on this occasion the

arrangements included the provision of three days’ initial training

for every judge, unless it was obvious that this was not needed.

Windows NT and Word 97 were the main features of the new

specification, together with an upgraded version of the

communications and conferencing software we had used since 1993

and a CD-ROM drive. Sadly, no provision was made for follow-up

training for novices, and about a thirdof our judges have still not

advanced very far in IT skills. A big IT training programme is being

planned for next year.

These 1,000 PCs were delivered between January 1999 and July

2000. By this time the approach of the Human Rights Act led to

arrangements by which we were provided with Internet access by

way of a specially designed portal. By this means judges, wherever

2004] The Use of Technology in the Courts 169

*Judge of the Court of Appeal for England and Wales. This article is based on a paper I

delivered to the Judicial Studies National Conference in Dublin, November 2002.

they were sitting, could access the database of judgments of the

European Court of Human Rights, and also a very large volume of

case-law and statutory material. This development excited the

interest of many judges who had not previously chosen to join the

scheme, and approval was given for the provision of a further 200

JT laptops. Since then, arrangements have been made for the

surrender of laptops by judges when they retire, and for the

provision of JT laptops, together with initial training, to new judges

soon after they are appointed to the bench.

At one time the Court Service thought they could deliver IT case

management systems at the same time as Lord Woolf’s civil justice

reforms. The then Head of Civil Justice, Sir Richard Scott, believed

strongly that the reforms should not be implemented until IT systems

were in place to give the procedural judges the support they needed

if they were to maintain effective judicial control from the centre.

This wish was never susceptible to fulfilment. For one thing, the new

rules and practice directions were forever being changed, and IT

systems designers need a period of stability in which to do their

work. For another,therewas insufficient know-how available on

how to design an intricate set of new systems without the risk of a

very expensive failure.

Iam bound to say that those of us who knew a little about IT

were becoming increasingly anxious about what might happen. The

systems that were being designed could not possibly have supported

the more sophisticated modern systems that were bound to be

needed in future. We feared that designers might be planning another

one-storey building, like CREST and CASEMAN, with shallow

foundations on which nothing could be built on top. Our vision was

of a 12-storey building, in which an electronic court file, serving the

needs of the trial judge, would in due course take pride of place.

Eventually the Government decided to implement the reforms on

26 April 1999 without waiting for the IT systems to be put in place.

Minor enhancements weremade to the existing (wholly inadequate)

systems, and for a short time additional court staff were allocated to

help with the increasing load of paper. In the Central Office at the

Royal Courts of Justice, for instance, case files had to be created for

the first time since those courts wereopened in 1882. The paper

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