Ricci Dipshan, Legaltech News
A look at how the integrated
courtroom and related technologies have evolved in the city-nation.
After the United States recently saw the deployment of the
first integrated electronic courtrooms on its soil, many were left wondering about what shape future
courtroom litigation will take. For answers, one may only need to look to the
city-nation of Singapore, which has already far surpassed the U.S. in its
embrace and deployment of such technology.
Charlie Harrel,
international development director and senior legal consultant at Opus 2
International, notes that Singapore has been on the front lines of integrating
technology into courtroom experiences for decades.
In 1997, for example,
the country implemented the Singapore Electronic Filing System, which became
mandatory shortly after for all court proceedings and has since updated its
system to incorporate more dynamic court forms in lieu of less agile .pdf
files.
With the support of the
Singapore Academy of Law and the Law Society of Singapore, the country's legal
community has also moved to fully embrace the use of novel technologies in
litigation.
In 2014, the country had
its first case "that made paperless trials a reality," Harrel said.
He explained that Supreme Court's trial of Global
Yellow Pages Ltd v Promedia Directories Pte Ltd was novel in its use of technologies (including Opus
2's own software) that "received positive media coverage for the cost
savings—estimated at $40,000—it enabled during the trial, and the efficiency of
digitizing 170,000 pages of court documents."
The case was shortly
followed by yet another Supreme Court trial, Management
Corporation Strata Title Plan No 3322 v Mer Vue Developments Pte Ltd, which Harrel noted was a "document-intensive
case" that made use of "real-time transcription and electronic
presentation of evidence services."
To manage even more of
these cases, Singapore's Supreme Court has taken the lead in building and
deploying five "high-tech hearing rooms," Harrel said, which handle
varying types of cases and "offer the latest AV and telepresence
technology."
Beyond the Supreme
Court, other arbitration centers in the country are also looking to help expand
access to litigation technologies for more litigation parties and trials.
Opus 2 International,
for example, recently announced a partnership with Singapore's
technology-compatible arbitration center Maxwell Chambers, through which the
center's clients will receive special rates for Opus 2 technologies for use in
their arbitration proceedings, as well as access to the company's Opus 2 Magnum
cloud platform.
In a statement
announcing the partnership, Opus 2 noted that its courtroom technologies, such
as its transcription services, will be integrated into Maxwell Chamber's
facilities. Harrel explained that the partnership grew from April 2015, when
"Opus 2 deployed Magnum services in Maxwell Chambers for the first time on
an international arbitration," which was shortly followed by another
"paper hearing using Magnum" in May and June 2015.
Litigation and courtroom
tools, however, are not the only technology that Singapore is leveraging in its
legal system. The
Strait Times, for
example, recently noted that a Singapore court has allowed the use of mobile
instant messaging service Whatsapp to notify a defendant of a civil suit. While
novel, it is not entirely unprecedented—the newspaper also said the country's
High Court allowed a plaintiff to serve papers to an Australia-based defendant
via email in May 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment