In depth: Starting gun fired on digital justice revolution

On the face of it, sections 19-33 of Part 2, Chapter 2 of the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, do not make exciting reading. But for the master of the rolls, the founding text of the Online Procedure Rule Committee (OPRC) is the start of a ‘groundbreaking and genuinely transformational’ justice revolution. ‘It is a statutory foundation of the digital justice system.’ 

Sir Geoffrey Vos was speaking this week at an event hosted by the Ministry of Justice and Law Society to launch the OPRC’s first pieces of work. These are consultation documents setting out a draft ‘inclusion framework’ and a ‘pre-action model for the digital justice system’. 

On 1 May 2025, a statutory instrument gave the OPRC the power to make rules in relation to property and in family proceedings for financial remedies. A consultation on foundational rules for the ‘digital court space’ will open shortly. 

In short, the MR’s five-year-old vision of an online justice system for civil, family and tribunals, in which the vast majority of disputes are resolved before getting anywhere near a court, is becoming reality.

'It won’t matter where the user first lands; if they start in the wrong place, the provider can move them somewhere else'

Lord Justice Jonathan Baker

What the digital justice system is not is another vast government IT project. ‘It is the exact antithesis,’ Vos stressed. The idea is to make use of existing, mainly privately run, systems, such as the Official Injury Claim and online advice and ombudsman portals, but in an integrated way. This means encouraging such services to adopt data standards so that if a case needs to be escalated or passed on, the would-be claimant does not have to start again from scratch. Hence the need for the pre-action model. 

This approach obviates the need for a single point of access, family specialist Lord Justice Jonathan Baker told the event. ‘It won’t matter where the user first lands; if they start in the wrong place, the provider can move them somewhere else.’ This is particularly important given that many potential users will have a combination of legal problems – or may not know they have a problem at all. 

Here, the OPRC’s inclusion framework is crucial. As the document notes, as digital justice services expand, they risk reinforcing old barriers to justice or creating new ones. ‘Inclusion must be embedded from the outset,’ said Dr Sarah Stephens, who is leading the OPRC’s work on inclusion. The need is to ‘ensure digital justice systems are inclusive by design, not as an afterthought’. The ambition, building on digital inclusion work elsewhere, is for ‘all users, regardless of background, identity or capability’ to understand, navigate and engage with digital justice processes from start to finish. 

Clearly, there is some way to go, Lord Justice Birss, deputy head of civil justice and judicial lead for artificial intelligence, noted. He recalled his wife’s struggles with the online probate system: ‘She got to a point where she needed to know what was going to happen next in order to answer a question.’ A solution to that sort of roadblock would be a function to allow dummy claims, he said. Today, the only way to learn how the online claims system works is to sue someone – ‘which is just nuts’.

Another question is what incentive providers of dispute resolution schemes will have to spend time and money conforming to the digital justice standards. The short answer, Birss said, is that it is in the providers’ interests. ‘A data standard will become mandatory because if I don’t use it, I won’t be able to communicate with the courts,’ he stressed. He noted that the history of technology, from the Whitworth screw thread to the USB plug, showed that standards for interoperability can achieve momentum without being enforced. 

One of the first fully OPRC-compliant components of the digital justice system could be the property and possession platform to be created under the Renters’ Rights Bill currently going through parliament, said Sir Geoffrey Vos. Further in the future, he hopes to see the system include early online legal advice, funded by legal aid. ‘None of this is expensive, we are making the best use of what’s available already.’

Many of these ideas chime with those in the Law Society’s 21st Century Justice report, published last month. This includes a recommendation for the government to build an online ‘solutions explorer’ as a triage entry route into the civil justice system. ‘There are more similarities than differences,’ Society deputy vice president Brett Dixon told the meeting.

The master of the rolls summed up: ‘The energy in the room is palpable. I’m now convinced we have the energy and ability to deliver.’