Digital lawyering
January 30, 2012
While the arrival of the digital age has transformed almost every industry around the world, in the United Kingdom, there's one profession where paper is still king: the law. Lawyers carry around piles of legal documents, and judges sift through binders of photocopied evidence, painstakingly compiled by legal staff and police.
The government believes it's time to change all that and make criminal justice in the UK digital, with the hope of saving 60 million euros ($79 million) in the process. Last fall, Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, called the move the "biggest transformational change in a generation." The changes are set to be fully in place by April 2012.
But recently the government's plans have been challenged by firms worried that they could unfairly favor the prosecution and make justice in the UK less fair.
Many hidden costs, critics argue
The UK government's criminal prosecuting authority, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), prints around 300 million sheets of paper per year. In a speech last September, the criminal justice minister, Nick Herbert, announced an end to the paper mountain:
"We must bring justice into the 21st century," he said. "So by next April we're requiring the entire criminal justice system to go digital, with secure transfer case files between police, prosecutors and courts, and reduction in number of time that the same information has to be captured or compiled."
As that April deadline approaches, the CPS can point to numerous milestones, including the first paperless prosecution in June last year at a court in southern England. But defense firms are up in arms.
In a letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions in December, the 30 largest criminal defense firms wrote that the costs of going digital could - in these difficult economic times - push some defense firms into bankruptcy.
Those costs include initial outlays for upgrading hardware and software, but also the costs of using the secure e-mail system that Herbert mentioned in his speech. Until now, defense firms have generally received one or two hard copies of the case bundle from the CPS.
Defense lawyer Richard Atkinson - who also chairs the British Law Society's criminal law committee - explains that if the bundle is transferred by email, the higher security level means he can't simply forward those emails on to his clients. Not to mention the fact that those clients may be in custody and not have email access.
"If they want a copy of their papers - which many do of course - then I will have to print them out," he told Deutsche Welle. "So you see that the system that was developed to save the CPS printing lots of paper, results in defense firms printing lots of paper. And the system that was aimed at saving costs for the CPS now creates costs for the defense."
The head of the efficiency program at the CPS, Ben Widdicomb, maintains that digitization will actually cost less for defense firms in the longer term, as it's more than just saving on printing.
"They only have to look to the savings they would make in courier costs, because they don't have to send big case files on, often many, many boxes," he said. "Equally they don't have to pay for storage or archiving costs."
Virtual courts
Beyond document digitization, the CPS is pushing the use of "virtual courts," where defendants, judges or lawyers appear in court via video link. So far, they've only been tested in two sites. The CPS says virtual courts have already saved over a hundred hours of police time.
If the pilots are successful, and new legislation allows, virtual courts are set to be held in other parts of the country - another way, say the CPS, that the UK is pioneering the integration of technology and the law.
But most legal professionals express skepticism that the infrastructure of the justice system can cope with digital lawyering: court buildings often don't have WiFi, nor adequate power sockets. Plus, many prisons don't allow lawyers to take in their own laptops.
Indeed, the CPS now talks about going primarily, rather than entirely, digital by April.
"Your lawyer is 10, 15, 20 miles away, in a courtroom, someone you've never met, who now you just see on a television screen," he said. "This is not an ideal way of communicating with anyone. But trying communicating with someone whose very liberty depends upon those communications is a very doubtful way of proceeding in a judicial capacity."
Author: Robin Powell, London
Editor: Cyrus Farivar