EFFECT OF TECHNOLOGY ON LAW

 EFFECT OF TECHNOLOGY ON LAW

• Introduction

Technology is one of the most prominent parts of the modern-day. The use of technology has extensively increased over the years and is involved in every field. One of those fields is the legal profession. Law is a very structured profession with precise forms of knowledge and flows of information and with new technology getting introduced, all the research work has become an easier task.

Prior to this hi-tech technology, law practices were a manual, traditional, tiresome and diligent act. Soon the typewriter and telephone came into the picture which made the mode of communication and writing and drafting way more agile and easy. And with the evolution of electronic typewriters, computers, mobile phones, fax machine showed an even faster way in legal practices. With technology being at its highest pace, the internet set another advanced level for legal practitioners. The Internet made access to various records, research materials and an enormous amount of data. This made the law practice more superficial and detailed. 

Technology more the chains for law practitioners who were used to spend the majority of their times in libraries or going through different records and writing down the stuff on papers. Even naming all the steps seems like a hectic job plus not to say time-consuming. Before this technology, the process of only researching took a whole lot of time and situations in courts were far worse. The inquires with people was one of the huge obstacles because of lack of means of communication and all the lengthy process eventually led to the piling up of cases which till the day is a huge problem in Legal Profession.

Artificial Intelligence and electronic discoveries set off a new trend and were being used in almost every industry. Getting in the legal world, AI and e-discoveries helped in picking up the pace of litigations and slowly clearing up the ones that got piled up for so long. Courts immediately switched and adopted the latest technology by using search engines, e-data, recording systems to minimize the time, labour, efforts.

The advancement was not just restricted to law practitioners, courts but also had an impact on law firms and clients. The dynamics of the law firms and clients have gotten better over time because of the availability of e-data easily. The firms can analyse the requirements of their clients and can meet their expectations in a better way.

Modern technologies, made all the countries come together and replaced the manual process with new electronic ways of managing data, doing evidence analysis, legal research and many more mechanisms. Forensic search got a huge pump because of the emerging technology which helped in bringing up more advanced research. As the trend of electronics spread, there were more experiments done with regards to it such as online solutions for legal forms, drafting on different situation. This helped the people who are not familiar with the legal mechanisms to understand these products more.

• Technology in Indian Courts

The introduction of technology in Indian courts was done in 1990. The National Centre Ministry of Information Technology proposed the idea of computerizing the applications in the High Courts and the Supreme Court, under the Courts Informatics Division. The utilization of the listing of business information system (LOBIS) overhauled the elementary structure of operating the back office of the courts. The system provided the schedule of the cases which are to be heard by the courts in the day and that eliminated the lengthy manual process of generating a causelist. This ultimately gave a new shape to the consecutive order of filing dates, automatic generation of causelists, grouping the cases with similar facts and law points, a quicker review of the dismissed cases, electronic filing of records.

Apex Court followed the computerization of filing counters which simplified the removal of difficulties by quick defect detection, and to that was given a quick rectification. It also lessened the lengthy queues of advocates and abated the calculation of court fees. Indian Judiciary picked up the digital advancement very quickly enabling the litigants to get their queries rectified online about their pending cases. An interactive voice response system (IVRS) is also available for advocates and litigants to track their case status. In fact, there is the online availability of all the reported judgement of the Supreme Court from 1950 till date incomplete text which can be referred to freely. 

The aftermath of the proposal was that in the year 2004, the Chief Justice of India forwarded the same proposal to the Union Government and an E-Committee was established to draft a National Policy about Computerization of Indian Judiciary and for advice in communication, emerging technology and related management required. Soon after this, a report was submitted for a project with the purpose of helping the judicial administration of the courts and modernize their daily activities by reducing the pending cases, providing clear information to the litigants and advocates and equip the judges with legal and judicial databases. The project was executed in three phases to have a preeminent output of having e-courts in the Indian Judiciary.

Technology brought in Filing FIRs online, recording shreds of evidence, examining witnesses by video-conferencing saved a lot of time, travelling costs as well as the risk involved in handling the offenders and enabled speedy disposal of cases. And because of precedents and legal prepositions available online, judges are in a better condition to analyse and determine the cases.

Recently, the virtual court system was introduced during the pandemic lockdown. The purpose of the system was to help the courts not lose even a single day’s work, so that number of piled up cases doesn’t increase. Virtual hearings in courts resulted in lower cost for litigation and less time-consuming.

• Conclusion

Technology has not brought a change in law but has also reshaped the basic system. Through everything being available online, whether its decision of already dismissed cases for the advocated online webinars and moot court exercise for legal practitioners, the field of law has picked up its pace and moved forward with the technology to reach the practice of speedy justice. Technology is now a big part of the system and is actually proved to be ideal to adapt it to meet up with the economic, social and legal expectations of society.

 

Written by Parul Sharma