How Technology is Changing Legal Systems
It’s hard to imagine any aspect of life nowadays that has not been changed by the progress of technology. Legal systems are no different, but they have taken a little longer to catch up due to their security and legal standpoints. That said, the courtroom today looks very different.
Virtual Hearings
Until the Covid-19 pandemic, virtual hearings were rare, but fast-forward a year or two, and they’ve been instrumental in sorting out the backlog of cases that built up due to the outbreak and helped the court’s process hearings more efficiently than ever before. What’s the catch?
Actually, there isn’t one; although juries are no longer in the same room as lawyers and defendants, evidence shows that it has little bearing on the outcome. Virtual hearings help speed up the courts and make the process more convenient and cheaper for jury members.
Better Research
Expert witness testimony is crucial to the outcomes of a case, and much of the time, research into the witness’s background is carried out as the trial is ongoing. In the past, lawyers had teams of assistants working round the clock to uncover details to discredit the witness.
Now, the process is faster and more convenient than ever, thanks to tools like Expert iQ, which brings together much of the available background information of a witness automatically. This frees up time for assistant researchers to dig deeper into the witness’s background faster.
File Sharing
File sharing is an integral part of the legal process; files need to be shared between lawyers, clients, and courts. In the past, this was done using secure courier services, but nowadays, technology has made things fasters and more straightforward. But there is a wrinkle.
The most common form of file sharing is email, but unfortunately, email is also fairly insecure, especially for the legal system. Instead, lawyers and courts use more secure file-sharing apps such as Dropbox and Citrix that have secure settings allowing the users to encrypt their files.
E – Litigation
E-litigation stands for Integrated Electronic Litigation System. This is the next step in electronic document sharing in the courts, which began way back in the year 2000. Between then and now, a lot of time has passed, and courts have permitted the use of technology more and more.
E-litigations leverage modern digital technologies to accelerate the process of litigation without sacrificing any security. These digital platforms include things like content management systems and e-forms that make life easier for lawyers, jurors, judges, and the courts using elitigation.
Computer Simulations
In the past, courts relied solely on expert testimony to determine the exact unfolding of events. This process takes time and costs money; it is also fairly unreliable at times, depending on the circumstances. Computer simulations are used more frequently to assist in jury cases.
Computer simulations are completely impartial; they calculate likely scenarios based on the data available and give courtrooms a fairly realistic picture of what occurred. These simulations are now widely accepted in the courtrooms and have transformed the legal process making it better.