News and Views Issue 5: Fall 2002
CLE on Technology in the Courts
At about the time that this newsletter is being mailed out, we will be on our way to the CBA Annual Conference in London, Ontario. We have organized a Continuing Legal Education Program entitled "Technology in the Courts" which will examine new technologies that are being developed in some Canadian courts. The program is on Tuesday August 13, 2002 at 1:30 pm and our panel of expert speakers consists of:
Peter Baran, CEO of Juricert and from the Law Society of British Columbia, who will speak about digitally secure identification and how it can be used to file electronic documents in court and in other legal registries. He will demonstrate "Juricert" which is a project of the Law Society of BC and other Law Societies.
Cynthia Tape, a lawyer at Torys LLP in Toronto, will speak about Document Organization Software, and how it can assist in managing a file, preparing for court and in producing effective and efficient courtroom presentations. She will provide a demonstration of this technology. She will also speak about electronic discovery and electronic disclosure.
Nils Jensen, Director of Municipal Court Reform with Court Services and the Crown's office in BC, will speak about the experience of setting up video conferencing capability in courts across BC, and will demonstrate video-conferencing by appearing via video conference from BC. Thanks to ACCA for making this demonstration possible.
Andy Sims, QC, will "speak" in an electronic presentation about the electronic appeals pilot project at the Alberta Court of Appeal. There will be a demonstration of an electronic factum, showing that all of the appeal documents (trial transcripts, exhibits, authorities) are included on CD-Rom and hyper-linked to one another, allowing for easy reference from one to another.Barbara Kincaid, General Counsel for the Supreme Court of Canada will wrap up by speaking about some of the lessons learned and the broader policy issues she has researched in the context of the Court's e-filing pilot project.
The program will be of interest to lawyers, judges, court administrators and technology enthusiasts. If you are unable to participate in the CLE, you may be interested in obtaining copies of the papers which are available through the CBA National office, by contacting Monique Cassidy at 1-800-267-8860 or by E-mail nickiec@cba.org