Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The state of the jus­tice sys­tem, in­clud­ing weak­ness­es and op­por­tu­ni­ties for im­prove­ment, as­sumed full fo­cus dur­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (LATT’s) Bi­en­ni­al Law Con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh out­lined plans and sug­ges­tions on how to en­sure a more ef­fi­cient Ju­di­cia­ry.

Boodoos­ingh, who was ap­point­ed as Chief Jus­tice on Oc­to­ber 22, 2025, ac­knowl­edged that the ad­dress was his first chance to pro­vide a full state­ment on his thoughts on pol­i­cy mat­ters re­lat­ing to the Ju­di­cia­ry.

Fram­ing his re­marks around what he de­scribed as a “re-imag­in­ing” of the jus­tice sys­tem, he re­mind­ed at­tor­neys present that the pub­lic they serve in­cludes every­one from chil­dren wait­ing to see which par­ent would re­ceive pri­ma­ry cus­tody, peo­ple seek­ing re­dress for in­juries caused by ac­ci­dents, busi­ness­peo­ple in need of re­dress for un­paid ser­vices and even taxi dri­vers chal­leng­ing tick­ets, among oth­ers.

“Each case is some­body’s sto­ry. So what do they want?

“The pub­lic wants an ac­ces­si­ble sys­tem. One that is fair and time­ly and where they are heard; where there is a res­o­lu­tion to the is­sues they have brought to the court in an ef­fi­cient man­ner; and they want a ra­tio­nal ba­sis for the de­ci­sions we give.”

For this rea­son, Boodoos­ingh urged the at­tor­neys present to do their part in im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of jus­tice and rep­re­sen­ta­tion of­fered, as he al­so vowed to work to­wards bring­ing a high­er qual­i­ty of ser­vice pro­vid­ed by the wider jus­tice sys­tem.

Re­fer­ring to re­cent con­sul­ta­tions on civ­il rules, Boodoos­ingh ques­tioned the need for cer­tain le­gal prac­tices, in­clud­ing the fil­ing of the same doc­u­ment re­peat­ed­ly, the need for per­mis­sion to be grant­ed for dif­fer­ent le­gal ap­pli­ca­tions and the lay­ered lit­i­ga­tion sys­tem which sep­a­rates plead­ings, doc­u­ments ex­change and ev­i­dence sub­mis­sion as op­posed to full “up­front” dis­clo­sure to move mat­ters along at a faster pace.

To im­prove the pace of crim­i­nal mat­ters, Boodoos­ingh there­fore sug­gest­ed there be bet­ter co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the judge, de­fence and pros­e­cu­tion, re­mind­ing at­tor­neys that co­op­er­at­ing on the time­ly pros­e­cu­tion of mat­ters does not weak­en one’s po­si­tion with­in a case.

He al­so rec­om­mend­ed con­tin­u­ous le­gal ed­u­ca­tion for at­tor­neys and pushed for a re­turn to phys­i­cal, in-per­son cas­es, which would al­low par­ties in­volved in cas­es to see each oth­er, a fea­ture of tra­di­tion­al hear­ings, which he says has some val­ue.

“As much as on­line court is con­ve­nient to both ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and prac­ti­tion­ers, there is a strong and com­pelling hu­man per­spec­tive that jus­tice should take place with the par­ties able to see each oth­er in per­son.”

Amidst new and in­no­v­a­tive ideas to bet­ter serve the pub­lic, Boodoos­ingh al­so warned against ex­ces­sive re­liance on Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) soft­ware dur­ing the le­gal process.

“We do not wish AI to be de­cid­ing cas­es for us, any more than we should wish AI to de­cide what laws Par­lia­ment should en­act or de­cid­ing how pub­lic funds should be spent.

“It can pro­vide use­ful da­ta for us to make the hu­man de­ci­sions.

“It is bet­ter that we wait a bit longer for a hu­man de­ci­sion to be made rather than re­ceiv­ing swifter jus­tice by a ma­chine de­cid­ing by pre­dict­ing the next words based on syn­the­sis­ing pre­vi­ous words.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the for­mal open­ing of the con­fer­ence, pres­i­dent of the LATT Lynette See­baran-Suite de­scribed Boodoos­ingh’s re­marks on ac­cess to jus­tice as a “breath of fresh air”, not­ing that rec­om­men­da­tions to re­turn in-per­son hear­ings were wel­comed.

“I was in­ter­est­ed in his en­cour­age­ment of the le­gal pro­fes­sion, the manda­to­ry con­tin­u­ing le­gal ed­u­ca­tion, which re­al­ly pro­motes the qual­i­ty of ser­vice lawyers pro­vide to their clients and to the pub­lic, so we’re very much hop­ing that the pow­ers that be in­tro­duce amend­ments to the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act.”