Bevil Wood­ing

?It may not be a wide­ly known fact, but courts through­out the Caribbean have been in­vest­ing heav­i­ly and mak­ing great ad­vances in lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice. For ex­am­ple, sev­er­al courts now rou­tine­ly post their rul­ings, opin­ions and filed pa­pers on the In­ter­net. Oth­er have im­ple­ment­ed or are test­ing elec­tron­ic fil­ing sys­tems to save both time, pa­per and, ul­ti­mate­ly, costs.

Tech with ben­e­fits

In tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced court­rooms, au­dio-vi­su­al dis­play and pre­sen­ta­tion sys­tems, video-con­fer­enc­ing of re­mote wit­ness­es, In­ter­net ac­cess and re­al-time tran­scrip­tion tech are be­ing used in a con­cert­ed ef­fort to re­duce tri­al time and as­so­ci­at­ed costs. Such tech­nol­o­gy is al­so be­ing used to help im­prove fact-find­ing by both judges, lawyers and ju­ries.

By al­low­ing pro­ceed­ings to move quick­ly, the new tech­nol­o­gy per­mits courts to try more cas­es and re­duces the de­lay be­tween the fil­ing of a case and its res­o­lu­tion. These ben­e­fits should on­ly in­crease as courts con­tin­ue to add tech­nol­o­gy, and as judges and lit­i­gants be­come more fa­mil­iar with the fea­tures of the ex­ist­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Use of court­room tech­nol­o­gy can al­so per­mit greater ac­cess to pro­ceed­ings by non-par­ties since they are able to see or hear any­thing that the ju­ry can.

Sim­i­lar­ly, rather than hav­ing to wade through box­es of ev­i­dence to find a phys­i­cal copy of a case doc­u­ment, then show the doc­u­ment to the op­pos­ing coun­sel, the wit­ness, the judge, and each ju­ror one by one, an elec­tron­ic copy can be eas­i­ly shared with the rel­e­vant per­sons in a mat­ter of sec­onds

5 Tech­nolo­gies Im­pact­ing Courts:

1. Ev­i­dence Pre­sen­ta­tion: To­day, court­rooms are be­ing equipped with high-res­o­lu­tion cam­eras, mul­ti­me­dia pro­jec­tors, video mon­i­tors, mi­cro­phones and hi-fi­deli­ty speak­er sys­tems. In some cas­es even the judge's bench, ju­ry-box­es and wit­ness stands are be­ing out­fit­ted with flat-screen LCDs and touch-screen tablets.

To bet­ter en­gage mem­bers of the pub­lic, sports-bar styled large screen mon­i­tors are al­so be­ing in­stalled to al­low them to al­so view ev­i­dence be­ing pre­sent­ed. Court­room can al­so be out­fit­ted with strate­gi­cal­ly-placed mi­cro­phones to per­mit speak­ers to be heard even while mov­ing around the court­room.

Cam­eras are al­so find a place in the dig­i­tal­ly-en­abled court­room. At­tor­neys can use cam­eras to bet­ter present fin­ger­prints, x-rays, maps and oth­er ev­i­dence; or to zoom in­to fine print on con­tracts or doc­u­ments.

2. Video Con­fer­enc­ing: Cam­eras, mi­cro­phones and mon­i­tors can be used to take tes­ti­mo­ny from re­mote wit­ness­es from an­oth­er town, city or coun­try. For ex­am­ple, a wit­ness in a sen­si­tive case may now tes­ti­fy safe­ly via video con­fer­enc­ing; or an ex­pert wit­ness from an­oth­er coun­try may be saved the time, cost and has­sle of trav­el­ing. Video con­fer­enc­ing al­so per­mits greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in sched­ul­ing cas­es.

3. E-Tran­scripts: E-tran­scripts are a safe and con­ve­nient way of de­liv­er­ing a tran­script elec­tron­i­cal­ly. Tran­scripts can be en­crypt­ed and pass­word pro­tect­ed, to en­able speedy elec­tron­ic de­liv­ery. This means lawyers can get their tran­scripts as soon as they are com­plete. E-tran­scripts can saved lawyers count­less hours in read­ing through tes­ti­mo­ny to find a spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence, by us­ing hy­per­link and word search­able now com­mon in elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment read­ers.

4. Re­al-time Tran­scrip­tion: Re­al-time tran­scrip­tion is a high­ly sought af­ter ser­vice in court­rooms. It en­ables lit­i­ga­tors to analyse tes­ti­mo­ny on a note­book or tablet com­put­er as it hap­pens in the court­room so they can ad­just their line of ques­tion­ing, or seek fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion on a mat­ter, with­out hav­ing to re­quest a read-back. It en­sures that tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en was de­liv­ered as it was in­tend­ed to be.

5. Live In­ter­net Stream­ing: This court re­port­ing tech­nol­o­gy is one of the most ex­cit­ing in­no­va­tions cur­rent­ly avail­able. It en­ables an un­lim­it­ed num­ber of peo­ple to view tes­ti­mo­ny as it hap­pens, from any lo­ca­tion. Live in­ter­net stream­ing has saved the le­gal in­dus­try a lot of mon­ey on trav­el ex­pens­es, since they can par­tic­i­pate in le­gal pro­ceed­ings from their of­fice any­where in the world.

Ca­pac­i­ty to trans­form

Many of these tech­nolo­gies have long been adopt­ed and en­joyed by busi­ness for years, in board­rooms, cor­po­rate of­fices. Yet the courts and jus­tice sys­tem lagged woe­ful­ly be­hind times.

Some mem­bers of the le­gal pro­fes­sion may view these mod­ern gad­gets and de­vices as an un­nec­es­sary en­cum­brance to court­room pro­ceed­ings. How­ev­er, tech­nol­o­gy's ca­pac­i­ty to rad­i­cal­ly and per­ma­nent­ly trans­form how jus­tice can be ad­min­is­tered should be be­yond dis­pute.

The time is ripe to more em­phat­i­cal­ly seize the op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, en­hance pub­lic ac­cess and ser­vice, and bol­ster pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence. The ju­ry is still out, how­ev­er, on whether our courts pos­sess the courage and re­solve to cre­ate the court­room of the fu­ture, to­day.

Are you a mem­ber of the le­gal pro­fes­sion or in­volved in the court sys­tem? What oth­er tech­nolo­gies do you be­lieve can play a pos­i­tive role in im­prov­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice? We would love to hear from you. Share your thoughts with us at tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters@ bright­path­foun­da­tion.org

Bevil Wood­ing is Chief Knowl­edge Of­fice at Con­gress WBN (C-WBN) an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor at Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, re­spon­si­ble for C-WBN's tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach ini­tia­tives. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing

Source: kl­wre­porters.com/tech­nol­o­gy-that-gives-a-com­pet­i­tive-edge-in-the-court­room