The Gazette 1992

GAZETTE

JUNE 1992

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Comput e rs in the Cour t room in Support of Litigation

the speedier issue of fines and warrants and the listing of court dates. Similar systems will soon be extended to other areas. Case tracking systems are being installed at present in the Cork, Dublin and Kildare Circuit Courts. A growing area in the use of technology in the United States is that of video display or recording, in some cases linked to the transcription service allowing for instant retrieval of recorded evidence on screen. The Criminal Evidence Bill 1992, currently before the Oireachtas, will allow for the use of similar technology in certain cases in this jurisdiction. In anticipation of the new legislation a video system is being installed in at least three courtrooms in the Four Courts, Dublin. The technology will allow for the handling of evidence in child abuse cases etc. In time it may also be used (as is the case in the United States) for the hearing of expert witness evidence from remote locations or for the hearing of evidence of prisoners from a secure location. potential uses in "A future for Courtroom Technology" Tina Bondy, Computer and Law Vol. 2 No. 5 November, 1991. See also "Information Technology in Litigation" Timothy Bovey, Law Society Gazette (London) 17 February 1988. "Technology and the Courtroom" Nicholas Purnell, New Law Journal 27 July, 1990. "Managing the Paper Mountain" David Cornwell, The Lawyer 28 May, 1991. (2) "Weighing the Benefits" David Cornwell, The Lawyer 11 February, 1992. (3) "A Computer on the Bench" Patrick Stevens, Law Society Gazette (London) 5 February, 1992. Further reading: (1) See the excellent review of

by John Furlong, Solicitor

• the need to reclassify documentation according to the dynamics of the case.

The progress of a court case from a client's first instructions to completion generates a vast amount of documentation within any office, some of which will be created internally on word processing systems and some of which is received from external sources. These external sources may include the firm's clients and legal counsel and representatives for the other party or parties in the case. All of the documentation must be constantly referred to, classified, collated and copied. Distinctions must be drawn between documents which are available to representatives of the other side and documents which are not; documents which may be produced in court and documents which may not; documents which are of primary importance and those which are not. A large litigation matter makes substantial inroads on the resources of any law Firm whether large or small. In order to present a successful case, the management and production of documentation must match the pressurised and constantly changing requirements of the case from commencement to completion. These include: • the need to generate a variety of reports for different participants in the case, • the need to retrieve rapidly documentation in Court, • the need to impose security requirements on documentation, • the requirement to illustrate salient points in graphical form during the court proceedings, • the need to identify and retrieve specific documents or pages of documents,

Automated systems which can provide the necessary classification and indexing routines have become popular in the United States. These have generically become known as litigation support systems. A basic litigation support system is one which allows for the building of a distinct reference and retrieval system for an individual litigation matter. In more sophisticated systems, reference and indexing is supplemented by optical image storage of each individual document. A further development of the litigation support concept is the ability to display relevant documents on screen in the courtroom. 1 Even the proponents of litigation support systems will emphasise the need to do cost benefit studies of its practical application in any firm. 2 The skeletal framework which is suitable for one case may require to be totally rewritten for another. In addition to the capital investment required (which can be substantial for a sophisticated system), there are also on-going costs in respect of data entry; the establishment of indexing routines and the operation of quality controls and review. At its most effective, litigation support must be viewed as part of a comprehensive automated courtroom process in which the courts themselves will make full use of technology. 3 In Ireland, there has been some limited use of technology in certain court cases and tribunals. Court administration has benefited from the automated case tracking and document generation systems in use for a number of years in the Dublin Metropolitan Courts and Limerick District Court and which allow for

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