In Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film “Brazil” a young bureaucrat working in an Orwellian society, Sam Lowry (played by Jonathan Pryce), finds himself sucked into a plot against the state being organised by a freelance plumber, Harry Tuttle (Robert de Niro). At the end of the film, Tuttle rescues Lowry, but then is consumed by a whirlwind of paper. There are occasions when I can imagine how Tuttle feels.
Piled up against the wall of my office is a large stack of paper files. On occasions the size of the pile gets a bit embarrassing when despite my best efforts, it grows to a ridiculous size. It is made up of closed files and court papers that I have not, as yet, got around to archiving.
The Family Court still runs on paper. Its IT is horribly obsolete. In a world where we can go online to do our banking, tax returns and shopping, you would think that we could file court papers electronically. But no – everything still has to be stuffed into envelopes and then sent in the post to the Court. When it reaches the court, it is processed by the court staff and judges, yet even then it is difficult to find out what is going on.
At the time of writing, it takes the court about 2 months to consider and make consent orders. As far as I can tell, the judge usually makes the order within a few days. The file then goes back to the court office and slowly works its way to the top of the pile, until it is sealed and sent out to the solicitors. That is likely to be 7 or 8 weeks later, by which time the deadline for implementing the terms of the agreement may have passed. If you ring the court to find out what is going on (a process that usually involves you being on hold for over an hour), you will be told “the file is with the judge”; in truth I suspect it is somewhere in the pile of files, but until it reaches the top of the pile, nothing will be entered on the court’s computer to show that the order has been made.
The court rules were revised in 2010, and have been amended since, but now make little sense when it comes to paper. For example, in many cases, the parties must file witness statements at court and send a copy to the other side. As far as I can tell, the court’s copy of the statement sits in the court file, where it is probably never looked at by the court. The judges are unlikely to read any of the papers in a case unless there is a hearing about to take place. I would be surprised if they read the statement filed at court, because we now also have to prepare a court bundle including the statement! If the judge reads any papers before the hearing, he or she’s going to read the ones in the bundle. So what on earth is the point of filing the original statement at court? The only justification that I can think of is cases where both parties are not legally represented, where the rules do not require them to lodge a bundle before a hearing.
A vast amount of time and money is wanted on moving large amounts of paper around. I recently had a case that was due to take place at the Family Court at Colchester Magistrates Court. As the hearing was listed to take place before magistrates, I had to provide four copies of the bundle; one for each for each of the three magistrates and one for the court’s legal adviser. The required me using a courier to send a box containing 4 A4 lever arch files to the Family Court. However, not to the Family Court in Colchester, but to the Family Court in Chelmsford, which handles all of the administration of cases about children. The Court in Chelmsford then shipped the box to the Family Court at Colchester Magistrates, which ironically, is about 200 yards from the courier’s office in Colchester. Except the Court then lost it and I had a grumpy judge demanding to know where the bundles were.
I shudder to think of the wastefulness of this, not to mention the cost. If only we could lodge the statements electronically, there would be no need for any of this.
I told a legal practice consultant about this and she, semi-seriously, suggested that it would be simpler to load all of the papers onto iPads and then hand them out to the magistrates, witnesses, the other side et al, and then gather them back in at the end.
There is so much unnecessary paper in the system. For example, the Petitioner’s solicitor in a divorce has to file a Reconciliation Statement, saying whether or not the client has been given advice about a reconciliation. I think that once upon a time the court had to keep a tally of these for the purposes of statistical monitoring and research. However, a court manager admitted in my presence last year that as far as he can tell, nothing happens with them. Yet if you try to issue a petition without it, your petition will be rejected.
Or then there is the concept of the Form A “for dismissal purposes”. Many courts insist that the court cannot make a financial consent order unless you also file a Form A application for a financial order “for dismissal purposes” i.e. the court can’t make any kind of order (including an order for a clean break which dismisses all claims) unless you have first applied for one. Yet the divorce petition contains the application. There is a boring technical reason why it might be necessary, but why not simply have rules that say that it isn’t, because it is yet another pointless piece of paper (or rather 13 pages of paper, mostly irrelevant). There is nothing in the rules to say that you have to do it, but the court often insists.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service is currently closing a number of courts in order to streamline the system. The County and Family Court in Colchester is due to close in March 2017. The money that is saved is instead supposed to be invested in new IT and case management systems. We are told that digital divorce is coming. As far as I am concerned , if it means less paper piled up against my office wall, that will be a good thing.
20 November 2016