In the last few years, a number of IT services have been developed for the purposes of speeding up the process of civil cases, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici said this morning. “We gave the public and legal practitioners new tools that make a positive difference,” he said at the launch of more services.

Legal practitioners can now go online at any time and access detailed summaries of every case and act that there is in the Registry of Civil Courts, by logging onto the service ‘Online Case Management’.

In the case of Magistrates’ Court a practitioner may download any document that was presented in any case; in time this service will be made available for Civil Courts too, he said. Citizens may also be able to access, through the service ‘MyActs’, documents in every civil case that was presented in their name.  

Another challenge that needs to be addressed is making it possible for civil cases to be opened online, with all payments being made via internet. “We already have the possibility that a case in the Small Claims Tribunal and Appeals can be opened online with all relevant payments. We are now extending this service, which will take effect on 1 October, to cases in the Administrative Review Tribunal.

“We appeal to all legal practitioners to use these new online services, so that gradually we may extend the online services to other Civil Courts. The final objective is that like the physical Civil Registry at the courts, there will be its equivalent in the online Civil Registry where one does not need to go to the law courts for the purposes of managing and opening up their Civil Cases,” Dr Bonnici said.

This process needs to be implemented gradually, so that it may reach all legal practitioners and citizens alike.

In the Revised Administrative Tribunal citizens and companies may register all complaints and requests in response to administrative decisions taken by any government entity. “We receive an average of 275 of these types of cases every year,” the minister said.

This Tribunal is regulated by the Act for Administrative Justice. Till today, any lawyer must present legal action in the Registry of this Tribunal, by physically going to the courts to submit all documents pertaining to the case. This process is time consuming.

With this system, from 1 October, all legal practitioners that are already registered in the system can facilitate legal action from the comfort of their office.

In 2011 and 2012, there were more cases being concluded than opened, with a clearance rate of about 25% and 40% respectively. In 2015 we reached a clearance rate of 149%. In addition to this, the amount of time a case is being processed before the Tribunal (disposition time) is the least it’s ever been.

There is a lot more work to be done, but we are convinced that we are on the right track, the minister said.