<b><i>Legal Tech:</b></i> Modernizing Litigation Practice: What Can the U.S. Learn from Electronic Courtrooms and Paperless Trials Abroad?

A Groundbreaking Litigation Program

Singapore is also pursuing the vision that is taking shape in the UK, beginning in 1997 with an electronic filing pilot (long since mandatory), and proceeding stepwise to a nationwide system for electronic courtrooms dubbed “eLitigation,” which leverages secure cloud technology, dynamic electronic court forms, and complete electronic access to case documents for as long as a case remains active. Early in the modernization process, the Singapore Academy of Law, the promotion and development agency for the country's legal industry, formalized the legal community's commitment by issuing a detailed “Roadmap” (2005) for implementing litigation technology. The Roadmap presented a remarkably prescient conception of a modern litigation system ' a conception embraced by Singapore's government as well ' envisioning electronic “ war rooms” that both sides of a dispute would use to facilitate communications and cooperation among lawyers, litigants and judges, and where “all documents and relevant material” would be available 24/7 to all appropriate parties throughout the litigation process.

For a snapshot of electronic litigation in action, consider two recent major international arbitrations at Singapore's Maxwell Chambers ' the world's first integrated dispute resolution complex ' which deployed cloud-based case management and legal collaboration technology that fully realizes the vision laid out in the Roadmap, establishing a virtual workroom where discovery documents, exhibits, research, testimony, attorney work product and other relevant materials were made accessible via secure login to authorized users to perform collaborative legal work, both in preparation for trial and in the actual courtroom proceedings. Digital materials could be consulted, organized into virtual folders, analyzed and annotated, and users were able to create live hyperlinks between documents and passages to streamline the presentation of arguments. A recent Supreme Court case in Singapore used the same technology to reduce a projected printing load of 250,000 sheets of paper (cost: $40,000) down to 2,500 to 3,000 pages. See, “Lawyers Go green to Save Paper, Time and Cost,” asiaone, Oct. 30, 2014.'

What can we learn from these developments in the UK and Singapore? And how might the approaches to modernization in those countries prove relevant to legal professionals in the US? A close look at these examples reveals a few basic principles.

For broad, rapid adoption of digitization and near-paperless courtrooms, government must play a leading role.

In both Singapore and the UK, high-ranking government ministers have provided invaluable leadership and pushed for funding to pursue a vision of thoroughly modernized courtrooms and litigation processes. In Singapore, the government aggressively mandated compliance with early initiatives like e-filing, thus accelerating the adoption of technology and minimizing resistance to buy-in in the private sector. In the UK, three Justice Ministers have been involved in advocating for modernization, planning various initiatives and securing funding, and Judge Elizabeth Gloster, who presided over Berezovsky and experienced first-hand the benefits of cloud-based legal collaboration software (saving five million sheets of paper in that case alone), is now a prominent advocate of technology in the courtroom. See, “London Courts Go Digital Ending Dickensian Document Legal Maze,” Bloomberg, Sept. 4, 2014. With savings projected at more than more than '100 million per year by 2019/20, the political rationale for modernization in the UK is hardly controversial. See, “Chris Grayling: Reform of the Courts and Tribunals,” gov.uk.'

Lawyers and other legal professionals in private practice must actively partner with each other and with government to embrace a common vision of technological transformation.

Industry-government partnership sets the stage for faster implementation, more uniform deployment and less fragmentation across different components of the legal system. Gains in efficiency and cost-effectiveness benefit all participants in the litigation process. Singapore has been exemplary in this regard, particularly with respect to its Academy of Law (Singapore's equivalent of the U.S.'s American Bar Association (ABA)), whose 2005 Roadmap presented an admirably ambitious conceptual framework for electronic litigation. The Academy is a statutory body of more than 10,000 members representing the full spectrum of the legal profession in the country, from Supreme Court Bench to all advocates and solicitors to corporate counsel and even foreign lawyers. Among the four “strategic thrusts” of its work as a development agency is the promotion of “Public-Private Sector Partnerships in the Development of Strategic Legal Infrastructure.”

Appropriate technology must be readily available, and its benefits in terms of cost and efficiency must be clear and demonstrable.

Such technology must leverage the flexibility, scalability and security advantages of advanced cloud computing. Because data is not stored on local servers, and Web-based user interfaces require no installation of software on local machines, very large cases can easily be accommodated without additional investments in infrastructure. Contrary to popular belief, the cloud also offers a much more secure environment, particularly since it eliminates the need to store and transport sensitive data on physical devices or media that can be lost or stolen, like laptops, tablets, flash drives and CDs or DVDs ' not to mention printed paper copies.

The technology should also be designed specifically for litigation, with a set of tools that streamline the full range of post-discovery legal tasks, including case analysis, case management, deposition prep, etc. The technology must accommodate all in-court activities so that lawyers, parties, witnesses and even perhaps the presiding judge can all view the same materials online from their own monitors or laptops, and legal teams can have instant access to all evidence, transcripts and their team's attorney work product throughout the proceedings.

Interestingly, the same technology that was used in Berezovsky, as well as for the international arbitrations (referenced above) that were recently held in Singapore's Maxwell Chambers, has begun to see adoption in the U.S. ' but not, to date, in its courtrooms. Instead, it has been taken up by legal teams looking for more efficient ways to perform substantive legal work in collaboration with colleagues before a matter goes to trial or negotiations. See, “Paperless Trials, Legal Collaboration and the Benefits of the Cloud,” Law Technology Today (ABA), Nov. 2, 2015. In the U.S., this may well represent our own unique path on the way to digital litigation or arbitration and paperless, or near-paperless, trials. The organizational structure of our state court system is still highly fragmented, with individual states doing things their own way and embracing innovations such as e-filing with different timelines and varying degrees of uniformity among in-state jurisdictions. Because of that, it seems more likely that adoption of cloud technology, electronic litigation and paperless practices in the U.S. will gather steam in pre-trial activities at law firms and legal departments rather than in the courtroom.

Can the private sector lead the way in the U.S.?

Certainly the intense pressure on today's GCs and law firm executives to develop more efficient and cost-effective practices can serve as a powerful incentive. What they may not immediately grasp is that the evolution of electronic courtrooms abroad provides a powerful use case for cloud-based technology. Indeed, it has direct applications for the collaborative work that their legal teams do every day as they assess the merits of a case, analyze and organize evidence, perform research, prepare for depositions and gradually develop a sound legal strategy that will serve their client's interest before they ever get to the courtroom.

Clare Foley is vice president for litigation solutions for Opus 2 Magnum. She advises law firms and corporate clients on their cloud collaboration strategies. Although originally from Ireland, Foley lives in the U.S. and guides both U.S. business strategies and international services.