Court IT: project will test integrated case management, e-filing and diary system

Four law firms are to trial an electronic filing project at the Commercial Court in London in a pilot that could herald much larger court IT changes in the future, the Gazette can reveal.


The chosen firms are expected to represent a spectrum of sizes to make sure that all practices, and not just the City's largest, can use any future fully-fledged e-filing system. The most likely start date for the trial is after Easter.


Sources close to the project say there is enough IT capability at the Commercial Court to allow four law firms to run the project, where documents can be submitted to the court and distributed in electronic formats.


Exactly how the system would work and which formats the e-filing system would use have not been released, but the word from those involved is that the group of firms - members of the Commercial Court users group - are now ironing out wrinkles rather than still facing serious technological hurdles.


The pilot paves the way for possible radical changes at the Commercial Court.


Unveiling the Commercial Court IT (CCIT) project in October last year, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, pointed to how it may shape technological changes across the whole courts system. 'The CCIT project... will provide an opportunity to test the concept of an integrated case management, e-file and diary system so that other jurisdictions may benefit in the future,' he said (see [2005] Gazette, 27 October, 7).


But it will not be plain sailing - though there is now obvious movement on these proposals, they may not see the light of day for some time.


The Gazette has been told that the completion of the first phase of the CCIT project will most likely not transpire until this summer's end, meaning that a full roll-out will probably not take place until 2007. This roll-out will also be hampered by decisions on which new property, if any, the Commercial Court will be housed in.


E-filing already happens in countries such as Australia and Singapore.


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