The e-Courtbundle has landed
“You had better get used to it as it appears to be the future,” said one judge. Geoff Russell reports on the piloting of E-Courtbundle in childcare proceedings in Nottinghamshire.
Both Nottinghamshire Family Court and Nottinghamshire County Council’s Legal Services have been piloting a programme which sees the transmission and use of an “E-Courtbundle” in court. Last month, saw the very first pilot in live care proceedings and since then, the E-Courtbundle has been used in two further live proceedings.
As part of the pilot, Nottinghamshire County Council undertook to temporarily provide laptops for judicial use and on which the E-Courtbundle had been installed. In addition, we provided a monitor for the witness table. Any party with an E-Courtbundle and a laptop can bring documents up on the witness monitor for consideration. No longer will witnesses have to manage multiple lever arch files.
Advocates using tablets in court is not new, but what is different is the fact that the Judiciary are conducting the case digitally, i.e. no paper bundle was produced or sent to court.
You only have to stop and think about the process of bundle creation to see how costly and inefficient it is for business. For a start, documents are collated and paginated. An index is then dictated and typed. The bundle is then photocopied multiple times after which it is dispatched to court. The court in turn, stores, allocates and transports the bundle(s) to the Judge or Magistrate or they in turn have to arrive at court to collect the bundle. After completion of the hearing, the bundle has to be retrieved and stored. For a video demonstration on the inefficiency of this practice please visit here (project section.
By utilizing ordinary “off the shelf” inexpensive software, which many offices already have (rather than bespoke / dedicated bundling software), we are able to compile a 400-page bundle, fully paginated and indexed within 25 minutes. Historically, this process would have taken 4-5 hours. In addition, the bundle is fully bookmarked i.e. it has a full digital index with page numbers and links to other documents in the bundle. Click on the title of the document and you are taken to it. To put this in a business context, a bespoke bundling package will cost in the region of £16-18,000 over 3 years for ten users. Our approach costs £2,500 for ten users. In addition, the software has added functionality such as redaction tools meaning that works can be redacted singularly or in bulk which saves time and money.
The bundle is word searchable as well as being paginated both continuously and on a section basis as per court practice directions. This way both paper and electronic devices can be used as part of the same hearing, meaning that a party using a paper bundle is not at any disadvantage. In addition, that police interview or audio interview which was always a problem can now be added directly into the bundle.
Once the bundle is completed, the entire bundle is sent to court via a plugin in Outlook. For practical purposes, staff are sending the bundle as an email attachment. In reality, they are sending the bundle via a secure server. The receiving party enters the pre allocated security password, after which, the bundle is saved to the court system. This also has the added advantage that Magistrates can now access bundles from home without having to travel to court to collect or carry multiple lever arch files.
The whole things take no more than a second to send electronically. No transport costs or courier fees. On receipt of an E-Courtbundle, parties are free to print out documents should they so wish. Given the way that the bundle has been paginated the bundle can either be printed and used on a paper basis or used electronically on a tablet, laptop, or even smart phone! Because both the digital and paper indexing is cross referenceable should a party be only able to use paper – they are not at a disadvantage.
The Family Justice Review identified that technology is key in improving performance but little guidance is provided in how that is to be achieved. Nottingham Family Court and Nottinghamshire County Council have now successfully conducted three sets of proceedings in this way and more importantly done so in a way which has required little in terms of financial outlay. But the fact remains, it has now been done and as a judge recently pointed out to a solicitor in an E-Courtbundle case, “You had better get used to it as this appears to be the future”.
Geoff Russell is Team Manager – Litigation at Nottinghamshire County Council. He can be contacted This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Should you like to see a demonstration of the functionality of an “E-Courtbundle” on an IPad, pc, Apple Mac or even mobile phone, then please visit Geoff Russell – project section via LinkedIn where a number of video demonstrations are posted together with a project update.
