Here at Shergroup we are on our own journey towards digitizing everything we do – we have been on this journey for the best part of 25 years but in recent months its fair to say it has ramped up! More to follow on this in the weeks ahead. It is an exciting time.
So, it was good to read yesterday that senior judges in the UK are also supportive of the digitization of legal services through government portals designed to take users through simple legal procedures – which coincides with Shergroup’s own approach.
In yesterday’s Law Society Gazette – now itself received in digital form by lawyers in England and Wales – a report caught our eye of how judges are embracing the digital world – http://bit.ly/2XIh6UW. Whilst the judges themselves were giving the English and Welsh digitized legal system a huge endorsement with their opinions, the comments of the users at the bottom of the article were frankly scathing. The concerns expressed about the delays and inefficiencies of courts in this part of the world were laid out by practitioners who are constantly waiting for paperwork to be returned and date s to be given. They were unimpressed with the path to digitization because at the moment they see no real benefit.
Of course, the art of the journey to digitize is to keep the offline process flowing while the online process takes over the heavy lifting. In smaller businesses this may be far easier than trying to transform a justice system, but the transformation has to happen.
For our part we have waiting patiently for the court system to digitize the transfer of county court judgments to the High Court for 20 years and perhaps we are getting closer. We want to see people who achieve a judgment, being able to place it for enforcement where they want to enforce it, rather than leaving it to the courts to decide who enforces it. Enforcement of a court judgment should be a service led by the judgment creditor who has a preferred provider. There is no need to lock judgment creditors, or their advisors, into a system where they are denied choice.
This is what we want to see – and this is how enforcement across the UK – including Scotland and Northern Ireland can be transformed. Ultimately if the digital journey leads the user to a faster judgment then this itself must be enforced quickly and efficiently.