The quality of justice is a constant and long‑standing concern of our country, as shown in particular by several regular recommendations forthcoming from stakeholders on ways of facilitating access to justice, on improving and simplifying procedures, on reducing the courts' workload and on refocusing judges' work on purely judicial activities.
The already limited resources at the court services agency are being pulled to unprecedented levels.
The quality of a judicial decision is directly conditioned by the funding made available to the judicial system. Courts cannot operate efficiently with inadequate human and material resources. Adequate judicial remuneration is necessary to shield from pressures aimed at influencing judges' decisions and, more generally, their behaviour and to ensure that the best candidates enter the judiciary.
The assistance of a qualified staff of clerks and the collaboration of judicial assistants and court attorneys, who should relieve the judges of more routine work and prepare the papers, can evidently contribute to improving the quality of decisions delivered by a court. If such resources are lacking, the effective functioning of the judicial system to achieve a high-quality product will be impossible.
Regrettably, such resources are indeed lacking, and qualified staff remain a tall order.
Strange as it may sound, the government's digitisation of the court system is adding to the delays plaguing the civil court system and undermining people's access to justice when they need it most. Many lawyers keep on uncovering the extent of technical issues with the system and the impact of these on the delivery of justice.
The government has been modernising the justice system to make it more straightforward, accessible and efficient. The court reform programme over the years was designed to improve courts and tribunals for court users.
It has had many successes in this time, such as the digital uptake of several applications and courtrooms being able to allow parties to join hearings remotely. However, it is important for the court services agency to learn from the problems in its systems, as well as its successes.
As it is, some lawyers still do not believe the portals are efficient and effective in delivering justice. They know that modernisation is a work in progress, but this is having a real impact on clients, especially as these portals are often used at an already challenging time. The increased delays and associated uncertainty these portals have created are causing additional stress.
Across the portals, contributing factors to the delays included timeliness, communication and technical issues, along with the lack of staff resources to deal with problems. Often, the online process takes longer than the paper-based system, with many experiencing poor response times and limited staff knowledge.
Some of these issues have come about because there simply wasn't sufficient engagement with the legal profession, the advice sector and members of the public when these systems were being designed.
Well-designed and thoroughly tested online systems have the potential to increase access, drive efficiency and streamline case management. An efficient court system ensures streamlined case management, fair and transparent proceedings and, ultimately, timely access to justice.
The justice minister should consider taking on board software to improve communication between online court systems and lawyers' case management systems. Moreover, robust data collection and transparency will aid continuous improvement of current and future online court systems.
Adequate judicial training is another sore point. This is required to improve the judiciary's organisational capacities in the areas of efficient case preparation and management (for example, by use of IT, case management, working techniques, and judgment/decision writing techniques, including guidelines with general models for drafting decisions, normally leaving judges some freedom to choose their individual style), all this with the aim of managing trial cases without unnecessary delay or unnecessary steps.
Staff at the court services agency still lack adequate training in the management of human resources and strategic planning to regulate and manage case flows, as well as efficient planning and use of budgetary and financial resources.
Administrative staff and court assistants should be specially trained in preparing the hearings and monitoring and ensuring the smooth progress of cases (for example, in relation to the use of IT, case and time management techniques, drafting of judgments, foreign languages, communication with the parties and the public and legal research). This will assist in relieving judges of administrative and technical duties and allow them to focus their time on the intellectual aspects and management of the trial process and decision-making.
The judiciary is one sector of the economy where the market system cannot work, given the absence of a functioning output price mechanism that could penalise inefficient courts.
We thus need to introduce an optimisation model to quantify the trade-off between resource capacity utilisation and disposition time for the caseload of courts of justice. The optimisation model takes into account the impact of an increase in demand that may arise when disposition time is reduced.
At a time when more citizens are more familiar with pop culture icons than the third branch of government, the lack of court resources will further jeopardise awareness of the important role the judicial system plays in a modern democracy. Lack of appreciation for the judicial system can often translate to a diminished perception of the value of lawyers.
The judicial branch of government persists in providing daily services to citizens, despite operating on a limited budget.
Convincing the average citizen of the judicial system's importance is increasingly difficult.