IT and the English Civil Justice System

Abstract

Abstract I am often asked about the various public sector projects with which I have been involved, especially those that relate to the civil justice system in England and Wales. What have been the most significant initiatives? How do they relate to one another? And how do they bear on the use of IT by practitioners? To answer these and other questions, I have written this personal perspective on past, current, and future uses of information technology in the civil justice system of England and Wales. I start with a brief historical analysis that identifies some key events in the development of IT-based civil litigation: the founding of the Society for Computers and Law in 1973; the establishment of the ITAC committee in 1985; and the innovations in the Official Referees Courts in the early 1990s. I suggest thereafter that in the decade from 1994 the major influence in the development of IT for the civil courts will be Lord Woolf’s Access to Justice Inquiry and its various recommendations on IT (summarized in this article). I then show that the Bowman Report on reform of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal encourages and develops similar applications of IT.