David Jackson, Director, CaseLines
DIFC Courts are making a significant step towards the modernisation of the courts process by implementing an easy-to-use secure interface. The new portal will permit court documents and (bundles) to be uploaded from anywhere in the world and shared with multiple parties. The CaseLines Digital Court platform enables paperless working across the whole hearing process and supports numerous users across multiple locations.
CaseLines is a digital court system designed to support lawyers and judges throughout the hearing process with easy to use tools for managing evidential documents and media. The system is a collaborative virtual structure that allows lawyers to build the evidence bundle for a hearing online, either from scratch, or by importing a draft bundle created in an existing Case Management System (CMS).
In an ever-more globalised business environment, a complex legal case may have teams in different offices around the world, often in different law firms, working with external experts, all of whom need access to the evidence bundle. The system allows users to create case teams across different firms and to share notes amongst each other, as well as allowing private notes.
Time-consuming activities such as printing and photocopying are made redundant by artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms that allow lawyers to detect duplicates and determine which copies are needed for the evidence file.
Video streaming capabilities are also available using a secure YouTube style interface to show video evidence in court. For virtual hearings, instant on-demand audio and video conferencing from the digital case file are also recorded and stored in the evidence file.
At a hearing, the judge, and those parties involved, work from the electronic bundle, with an inbuilt review interface negating the need for a courtroom operator. Automatic hyperlinking of skeleton arguments and pleadings to evidence are built into the digital case file, as well as automatic bundle pagination and re-pagination of new documents.
Of course, the natural question is – “does this work, and is it really that easy?” The answer is yes – globally, there are already 230,000 cases in the system, with 15,000 lawyers and 1,400 judges who use the system on a daily basis.