Courts have never made the best use of the latest technology.

After spending a year investigating ways to make the wheels of civil justice turn more swiftly and efficiently, Lord Woolf suggested -- among many other things -- that judges and lawyers could save large amounts of time and money by using telephones for case management.

Telephones had been in existence for a century when he made the comment six years ago.The Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, has decided that the courts will not have to wait so long to benefit from information technology.

He has pledged £43 million of public funding to apply IT to the civil courts, plus £94 million for Crown Courts.The plan will see e-mail, video-conferencing, telephones, computerised files and case management being used for improved communication between the courts and users, and within the administration of the courts themselves, with many of the changes to come within three years.A Law Society spokeswoman said: 'The Law Society welcomes the government's proposals to invest in technology to modernise the civil courts.

This should improve access to justice and the efficiency of the court system.'However, solicitors remain cautious about how much and how quickly things will improve.Fraser Whitehead, a partner in London-based Russell Jones & Walker and chairman of the Law Society's civil litigation committee, says the revolution will happen, but he questions how quickly.Of the proposals for reform of the civil courts, outlined in a paper released in January, he says: 'You have to be disappointed with what has been achieved by the county courts to date.'They are still struggling to manage manual systems, and haven't even begun to appraise all the problems that can be thrown up with information technology.' He adds: 'I think it is symptomatic that I now have a significant amount of my communication with counsel and the other side by e-mail, but no communication with courts by e-mail.'Mr Whitehead cites a current case in which his firm is acting for the defendant in a professional negligence claim, illustrating that in terms of communications technology some courts are coming from a long way back.A directions hearing was set for 27 March, and the firm asked whether it could be by telephone conference, because the partner had a tight schedule that day.

Four days before the date, the court had not responded.

The night before the case was set for hearing, the firm rang to ask again, and was told it was before a judge, and the court would let them know.

'We had a telephone call at 10.30am, four hours before the hearing, saying "yes you can have a conference call".

By that time it was too late to set it up.' To make matters worse, when the solicitor arrived at the 2.30pm hearing, the court had lost the file.Mr Whitehead, whose committee was expected to respond to the proposals before the consultation period ends this week, is doubtful whether there is enough money on the table for such ambitious plans.

He says: 'They are bold and imaginative proposals and whether resources can be made available to match the expectation is another thing.'Mr Whitehead suggests that £43 million is not much more than a big City firm would spend on its IT during the same period.

For the civil courts, it would need to be multiplied by ten to be realistic, he maintains.This sentiment was echoed by the Law Society spokeswoman.

She said: 'While cost savings may result in the long term, in the short term, on the contrary, considerable investment is likely to be needed.'The court system is at present considerably under-resourced and both the implementation and operation of this programme of modernisation must be properly financed and resourced if it is to bring benefits to users.

The £43 million set aside is likely to be insufficient to achieve all the aims discussed in the paper, so changes will have to be phased in.'On the criminal side, there is doubt about the system's capacity to manage further change fast.

Malcolm Fowler, chairman of the Law Society's criminal law committee, and a partner in the Birmingham firm Jonas Roy Bloom, says solicitors support computerisation.

'It will streamline and make more efficient the delivery of justice.

But if we are not careful, we will be striving to run before we can walk, in that technology, however sophisticated, is not a substitute for sufficiently trained, dedicated personnel.'At the moment they are both these things, but over-stretched, he says.

'Flamboyant launches of technological improvements are no substitute for adequate resources, and sufficiently good work conditions to encourage recruitment,' he maintains.'The Lord Chief Justice is saying the system needs a moratorium.

It needs bringing forward, but the system is punch- drunk, which leads to lower morale.

If you don't give changes time to bed down, you're not monitoring them to see if they are working.

It's not scientific just to keep changing all the time.'There is also scepticism over whether technological advances might not in some ways worsen the business of law.

Take the aspiration on both sides of the justice system for 'paperless courts', with business conducted on screen rather than by bundles.Mark Roe, a partner at London-based Masons, says: 'I use technology a lot, but I know if somebody sends me a 40-page e-mail attachment, I'll print it off.

I personally don't like reading off screens for any length of time.

I don't know anybody who does.'He still has worries about the ability of technology to transfer text documents from paper to computer screen.

'We scan quite a lot by optical character recognition.

I keep saying there mustn't be more than one character wrong per page.

In contracts and pleadings the difference between the words "not" and "now" matters.'Mr Roe concedes that the degree of worry about the importance of inaccuracies may be unjustified, but if people do not trust documents, that is a problem in itself.And Mr Roe, a member of the information technology advisory committee to the Lord Chancellor, also points out it may take time for staff to adapt to working from documents on screen in court.

'If you want to refer to a document, you have to shout out an eight-digit number, then the document comes up on everyone's screen.

That's a bit different from working from a bundle and referring to a page number,' he says.He says he finds it cumbersome working from large documents on screen.

There is the advantage that you can search for a phrase or name easily.

'But then it comes up, and you think "where am I in the contract -- which section?" You only know you are on page 631 out of 1,300.'Video conferencing in place of meetings can save time and money in civil and criminal courts, particularly for short interim and technical hearings.

But Mr Fowler says: 'There must always be a limitation on the use put to such communication.

There is no substitute to a face-to-face conversation across a table on delicate confidential issues about your client's instructions and the advice you give.

The machinery for communicating in prisons should be on the basis of topping up, following an extensive face-to-face in-person interview.'Pilot projects are the sensible way to proceed, solicitors maintain; the criminal pilot has just begun at Kingston Crown Court, south-west London.

Indeed, in Preston County Court, where a limited civil experiment has been running since February, there has been approval from users, according to Christopher Mathews, a partner in the Kirkham office of Preston firm Dickson Haslam.'You e-mail an application to the judge; he e-mails it back to you and the other parties, and you've got your order.' Theoretically, this could have been done by fax for years, but the system was never set up.

'Preston being what it is, if you fax it, you could never be altogether sure whose desk it has landed on,' he says.The only people who may not be so happy are the judges, as their tasks become increasingly faceless.

Mr Mathews says: 'I talked to a judge in Preston the other day, who said he has the fear that in the not-too-distant future he's going to sit behind his desk and nobody will come in all day.

He'll deal with everyone by e-mail and telephone.'Who would that leave to admire the judicial splendour?