The Impact of E-Court Services on Brick-and-Mortar Courthouses and the Physical Presence of Judges


Supply chain management -- the topic of the previous post, along with the related financial topic of asset management of court real estate (“The Untapped Public Wealth of Courts,” December 04, 2018) -- was initially prompted years ago by declining court cases and decreasing flows of legal proceedings in courts and tribunals. Understanding the size, location, and spatial distribution of existing judicial resources and networks is critical to evaluating and balancing the supply and demand of judicial services delivered by courts. How many courts does a judicial system need and where should they be located to administer justice effectively, efficiently, and fairly?  How far away can courts be from the citizenry before the distance constitute a barrier for access to justice? These are questions addressed by me and my colleague Robert R. Rose, Director of the Center for Geospatial Analysis at the College of William & Mary (W&M) in Williamsburg, Virginia, in a series of judicial mapping studies for the Nove Pravosuddya Justice Sector Reform Program (New Justice Program) in Ukraine, a program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) implemented by Chemonics International Inc. The results were presented to an international audience of court administrators in Brazil this September of this year and summarized in an  article shortly thereafter.



A related question has come to the fore over the last two years: How should access to justice and “distance” to courts be redefined in today’s world of remote access to courts with the promise of new technology such as online dispute resolution (ODR). ODR is driving renewed consideration of the consolidation and closure of courts and may invigorate supply chain management and asset management of court resources.



The Attraction of Virtual Services



Experts in court technology, including Jim McMillan, Principal Court Management Consultant at the National Center for State Court and long-time blogger of  the Court Technology Bulletin  agree with the findings of a recent study by the Stanford Legal Design Lab that technology is valued by court users if it promotes virtual services that do not require them  to come to court.  Their concerns about coming to court include taking time off from work, securing childcare, time and money spent on parking, dealing with traffic, and having to wait in long lines at the courthouse. As summarized in a recent article by Margaret Hagen, director of the Stanford Lab, study participants ranked chatting  on a “website with a law librarian or lawyer as their preferred innovation,” which they said courts should be investing in. In second place, they chose “virtual courts — where they could appear remotely in the courthouse or courtroom through video conference.” In general, they saw the Internet as a key location for legal help and valued Internet-based technology tools that would allow them to “get their question answered, or a dispute resolved,” anything that could save them a trip to court. They emphasized that whether it is on a desktop computer, mobile phone, or smart assistant, the Internet is an extremely key source of information. The participants recommended much more investment in the level and interactivity of the information that is available online.



The Breadth of Online Court Services



Extending our judicial mapping efforts in Ukraine, the question of the impact of virtual services that do not require court users to come to court is today being explored in a study by Kelsie Wheeler, Molly Miller, and Kiel Kinkade, three of my colleagues in the International Branch of the Public Policy Program at W&M. Specifically, the researchers are studying the impact of Internet-enabled remote access to courts on supply chain management of judicial services in Odessa, an oblast (province) of southwestern Ukraine, located along the northern coast of the Black Sea. Impact will, of course, depend on the degree of Internet penetration. To date, the research team has mapped mobile and broadband coverage across the judicial circuits of the Odessa Oblast compared to the population density of the circuits and is preparing to analyze its implications for access to digital court technology and the judicial supply chain in Ukraine. While the promise of ODR has drawn the most attention, the entire slew of Internet-enabled services beyond the relatively circumscribed ODR (which is focused mostly on litigants, not other actors with broad and varied business in the courts, including attorneys, witnesses, experts, court observers, litigants’ family members, couriers, attorneys and judges, and which is typically limited to specific types of cases) should be considered.



The following is a listing drawn from the posts in the Court Technology Bulletin since the beginning of this year that suggests the breadth of Internet-enabled judicial services beyond the relatively narrow confines of ODR.



·       Remote appearances (not only by litigants but also judges, witnesses, experts, and attorneys from anywhere)

·       Self-help e-courts

·       Public on-line portals

·       Smart forms

·       Videoconferencing (telepresence)

·       Email and text-messaging

·       E-payment services

·       Court “customer” user interface

·       E-filing

·       Natural language artificial intelligence (AI)



In addition to ODR, to what degree might these online judicial services reduce the need for courthouses and the physical presence of judges? If the W&M researchers are able to make some informed guesses about the impact of ODR on supply chain management of judicial services in Odessa, how much more might these e-court services contribute?  The researchers will be issuing their final report by the end of this year.



Stay tuned for more on this in future posts.



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