In many ways, the ongoing deadly Covid-19 pandemic has compelled the world to change its way of life in almost all aspects of its human existence and the courts of law of our country are no exception.
In fact, the judicial system has quickly adopted widespread use of video hearings with the aim of imparting justice in important and urgent matters during the pandemic.
All said, the fact remains that a large number of advocates and judges across the country are not accustomed to this technophile world. There are a lot of times where the server gets overloaded due to filing and then ultimately crashes down. This is of great concern because of the need to ensure the privacy and security of the case related details and other technicalities. Besides, there are a number of glitches including but not limited to the following that needs to be cleared:
- Litigants are unable to join the proceedings: Prisoners and litigants are finding it hard to participate in the court proceedings.
- Internet Connectivity issues: The present bandwidth is proving to be lacking to reach the e-court. Lawyers and litigants in most cases do not have good connectivity and hence, further poor bandwidth badly affects smooth video conferencing.
- Deficiency of Knowledge / Inadequate Training: Chances are that the senior advocates and the judges may not be well- versed with the technical uses and advancements. Therefore, proper training is required at all levels.
- Long drawn-out Procedure: Elaborate procedure of filing both physical and e-filing is another major shortcomings of the system.
- Notifying Defects: In the e-filing process, the process of notifying defects needs to be made simpler. The registry is required to be well-equipped with the technology of notifying defects in the file of the lawyer so that the lawyer may remedy the defects and e-file it again.
As far the solution of these problems are concerned, at the outset, let us first try to know what is meant by ‘Legal Design’.
In the words of Margret Hagan of the Legal Design Lab, “Legal design is the application of human-centered design to the world of law, to make legal systems and services more human-centered, usable, and satisfying.” In other words, Legal design is a way of assessing and creating legal services with a spotlight on how usable, useful, and engaging these services are.
Broadly, Legal design helps in simplifying the dispensation of justice and is more user-friendly which challenges the conventional way of doing things. Therefore, the Judiciary should use design thinking to create better virtual court systems.
Are there any countries that have used legal design to create virtual courts?
A lot many countries have been using virtual hearings for many years. One example is the way courts in the Netherlands have gone about using virtual hearings. Here, the Ministry in the Netherlands has been using virtual hearings since 2002.
The Ministry has contacted many stakeholders to develop careful criteria for videoconferencing technology, especially those that are essential to giving court users a ‘true-to-life’ experience. This includes clearly representing the detail of an individual’s looks, facial expression, mouth movements, the direction of view, gestures and posture, while also setting as standard that nobody should be able to manipulate the view by zooming, focusing or panning cameras.
How legal design can change the way virtual courts work?
Introduction to Uniformity: Diverse software and apps are being used by the courts across the country lacking unanimity in promoting video conferencing and digital hearing. Every app, software works on a different setup, thus making it even more difficult for the lawyers/litigants to bring their emergency cases to the court.
Needs of the staff: E-Court filing and video conferencing should be designed in a way that keeps in view the needs of the litigants/Bar/Bench as well as the court staff responsible for filing and all the important procedures.
Provision of a well-equipped E-court room: It is required that every court should make available proper screens and speakers. District and Taluka courts may consider having an e-court room within its premises where the advocates/litigants who have a video conferencing room/e-court room where they can appear for an e-court hearing that tech infrastructure can utilize it.
Working on the Bandwidth factor: Reviewing the glitches, the basic one of them seems to be the bandwidth limiting the court to function at their full capacity. If possible, it would help to try fixing the issue providing it considerable preference.
What is the way forward?
Looking ahead, it can be said that the successful implementation of e-courts would require both social and technological innovation, and design thinking can really bring many benefits.
On the face of it, a ‘design thinking’ approach would essentially involve all stakeholders (technical skills of engineers and digital architects, justice professionals, including litigants, lawyers and judges, prisoners, police, and other experts) by interviewing them, observing their behaviors, recording their attitudes and working with them to swiftly prototype new concepts.
And, this approach could indeed help the new avatar of courts to be successful!