使法院更有效率

Digital strategies for a modernjudicial process Courts face the twin challenges of case backlogsand holding virtual hearings. Streamlining evidencemanagement can help clear these backlogs, increase The need for a moreproductive process Even before the pandemic, many courts were facingcase backlogs. The problem was exacerbated whenCOVID-19 forced many courts to shut down or drastically Many found a way to continue hearings online, embracingvideo conferencing and electronic file technology. But thesemethods and tools are often generic—not designed for the Here, we explore six common problems courts face todayand outline approaches to overcoming them. We hope this guide inspires you to build on the role of digitaltechnology in your jurisdiction. For more information or toarrange a demo, please visit theDigital Evidence Center. “Arizona prides itself on being on the cutting edgeof innovation within the courts. The engagementwith Thomson Reuters will help us manage thebacklog of cases in the court system, better manage Dave ByersDirector of the Administrative Office of the Arizona Courts Better ways tomanage evidence “The Digital Evidence Center has completely transformedthe ways in which I work. It has undoubtedly made meconsiderably more efficient and it has meant that I have It is a practical, easy-to-use tool, which gives youeverything you had before and a very considerable Lord Justice FulfordVice-President of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division),England and Wales Better ways to manage evidence Running a court is expensive, which is why legal bodies work hardto make their processes as efficient as possible. Electronic methodshave been widespread in evidence management for years, but these Thomson Reuters® Digital Evidence Centersteps beyond the simple replication of paperprocesses in digital form. It presents asingle source of evidence for all, to whichall parties are invited. Evidence is stored,reviewed, and accessed entirely onlinethrough a web browser. Parties do notneed to download a local copy or send out Going paperless solves some issues, but ifthat results in multiple digital versions ofpaper documents, to which not all parties Most types of exhibits cannot easily bee-filed, and e-filing does not create a sharedin-hearing experience for parties or the judge.Forward thinking courts are considering notonly the IT side of evidence management,but the experiential side, too. This meanspaying attention to what happens in a hearingbetween judges and parties as they present, Not only does a single repository streamlineaccess to evidence, it also makes things moresecure and auditable. Sending evidence viaemail is inherently insecure, and attempts toprotect documents by emailing passwordsseparately are clunky. There is also a limit on Better ways to manage evidence Parties can securely access the DigitalEvidence Center from any location on anydevice, as long as they have an activeinternet connection. Once set up, the DigitalEvidence Center enables new levels oforganization that were not available usingPDFs or paper. Jurisdictions can standardizethe structures of cases so all parties knowwhere to upload their information and whereother parties’ uploads can be found. It’s alsoeasy to identify which exhibits belong to Jurisdictions can also specify how evidenceis organized within the Digital EvidenceCenter according to the needs of a case.Courts can bundle all evidence that wasadmitted into cases, with notes detailingwhy certain evidence was not admitted. A single source ofevidence for all “I think this case would have been totally unmanageablewithout the Digital Evidence Center. I dread to even thinkhow many three-ring binders there would have been andhow much longer it would have taken to guide witnesses A single source of evidence for all In our experience, the number one frustration for judgesis delays in ensuring all parties are referring to the samepage in a document during a trial. Whether using paper or digital documents,too much time is wasted finding the correctfiles, pages, and paragraphs, let alone thestart point of key video evidence. This isexacerbated when parties could be dealingwith multiple versions of a document and The essence of Digital Evidence Centeris that it provides one repository for alldocumentation relating to a case. Partiesare invited to that repository, rather than A single source of evidence for all During the hearing, presenters can use PageDirection to guide all parties to precise pointswithin the mass of documentation that casescontain, safe in the knowledge that all otherparties will automatically be moved to thesepoints in their shared documentation base.This is one less thing to worry about and is The benefits lie in the accumulation of manysmall time savings. One Digital EvidenceCenter customer estimated 20 seconds savedevery time an attorney directs someone to apage. With three hearings a week over a six-month trial, this adds up to hours