UK Judge Calls For An Online Court Without Lawyers To Cut Costs 103
mi writes from a report via The Times: A senior judge has called for the establishment of an online court (Warning: source may be paywalled) that does not have lawyers and can deal with claims of up to 25,000 British Pound (around $32,850). The proposal is the centerpiece of a package of reforms to the civil justice system, drawn up by Lord Justice Briggs, a Court of Appeal judge. Just how exactly will this court ensure no one is, in fact, a trained professional on the internet, where no one knows who you really are, is not explained. We discussed the idea last year. Apparently, it is still alive. The judge's report says this computer court would provide "effective access to justice without having to incur the disproportionate cost of using lawyers." The Law Gazette reported earlier in June that Briggs has mused about a three-stage process -- triage, conciliation and final judgement -- in which there might be some lawyer involvement.
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cost of using layers (Score:2)
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Read the biographies of some of the famous lawyers, they will tell you how totally unprepared law school left them for court. Courts are used to incompetent lawy
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We need the law's version of universal health care, public defenders for civil cases also. There are too many innocent victims who can't afford to defend themselves from trumped up charges and lawsuits.
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We need the law's version of universal health care, public defenders for civil cases also. There are too many innocent victims who can't afford to defend themselves from trumped up charges and lawsuits.
I would rather address the same problem by tightening up civil procedure to match the stiffer standards of criminal trial procedure. If civil suits required a unanimous jury verdict rather than a majority and on an evidence standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" rather than "preponderance of evidence" the junk suits would melt away.
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-- Correct, as would a very large number of non-junk suits, which is not such a good idea.
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I would think a reasonable compromise would be to restrict the preponderance of evidence standard to demonstrated direct damages and injuctions required to prevent further damages.
Statutory and punitive damages are essentially fines and should be held to the same standard of evidence.
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'If civil suits required a unanimous jury verdict ... and ... an evidence standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" ... the junk suits would melt away'
-- Correct, as would a very large number of non-junk suits, which is not such a good idea.
I would like to make civil suits more difficult to file without having the government pass judgement on what level of damages are 'good' or not outside the settlement of a given case. This goes beyond individual squabbles: with such a reform, perhaps we could start building large-scale public infrastructure again. My Exhibit A is California high speed rail.
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Well, a government or corporation should never be permitted to use civil procedure against individuals anyway. The government in particular only uses it to circumvent a person's legal rights, like a unanimous jury decision and reasonable doubt, the IRS and civil asset forfeiture being the prime example. Civil procedure should only be available to a civilian, never to the official, except maybe in simple contract disputes, where everything is in black and white. And a preponderance of evidence and majority o
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"Disagree. How is my company going to recover damages from an employee who stole a pallet of paperclips if they can't file civil suit?"
Theft is a criminal offense. If you believe you have evidence that will stand up in criminal procedure, file charges.
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"Well, a government or corporation should never be permitted to use civil procedure against individuals anyway. The government in particular only uses it to circumvent a person's legal rights, like a unanimous jury decision and reasonable doubt, the IRS and civil asset forfeiture being the prime example. "
Good point, but civil asset forfeiture is not an example of civil trial procedure because there is no suit/charge and no trial at all: the cops just take your stuff without any legal recourse at all. They
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Disagree. How is my company going to recover damages from an employee who turned out to be ensuring contracts went to his beloved (read: expensively incompetent) nephew who supplied us with dangerously defective goods?
Yes, criminal charges may well be involved, but this is a situation where it's not either/or but both--civil court is where the victims have to go to get their money back, and it's quite rare for any monetary penalty in criminal court to not get pocketed by the government.
More Socialized Services! (Score:3)
Yey! Veterans Affairs [huffingtonpost.com] for all!..
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It all leads back to public apathy/antipathy. The government will only do what is demanded of it.
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Good luck.
Meanwhile, haters of Coca-Cola can switch to Pepsi without waiting for elections...
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I guess you haven't noticed, the government actually does respond when pushed hard enough. All its problems can be traced back to us.
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The "hard enough" part is the caveat-emptor to drive a truck through. Meanwhile, switching from one competing product (GM, Toyota or Coke, Pepsi or Domino's, Papa Gino) or service to another takes little or no effort.
The "single payer" you and yours call for eliminates competition between service-providers in yet another area — and the already cited Veterans Affairs outrage is what awaits all of us, should you succeed.
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The "single payer" you and yours call for eliminates competition...
On the contrary... That is where you are totally wrong. It is the competition, from the people, that's you and me, that can put some honesty into the game. I mean, if you're not interested, fine, but don't blame the institution that actually has the consent of our vote. This ain't like your old home town that still may be influencing your opinion. Here we have a voice. All we have to do is use it, or lose it. I know that I'm the goof, but th
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We have this tool that lets ordinary people do their own research. You may have heard of it. It's called the Internet. You can also avoid paying $20,000 or more for a lawyer by taking that same $20,000 to pay yourself to sit in court for a couple hundred hours and learn how it really works in practice, instead of TV shows. That's $100/hour tax-free.
You'll also get to see people successfully prosecuting their own claims, and defending against others' claims. It's not as hard as it looks if you're reasonably
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I am sorry but that's a fight where one side knows what the game is,and how to play while the other likely can't even guess where to look for the rules.
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Trolling slashdot is good preparation for anyone who wants to argue a case in court. You need to WANT to make the other side look as stupid as possible. That should motivate you to do your research.
This (Score:2)
Small claims was exactly what I was thinking. Divorce courts regularly have Lawyers, and are helpful in mediating things like child custody, child support, alimony, and splitting wealth.
There are no courts in the US that require lawyers except perhaps as you mentioned, arguing before a Supreme Court. A person may not be considered competent by a judge and given a Lawyer, but it's rarely necessary. AFAIK you can be a litigator in any court case and not be a Lawyer, but there are rules regarding it (must h
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Bull crap. 60% of all family court cases here (divorce, separation, child custody) already have 1 party representing themselves.
Mother is usually the represented one after having made a phony allegation of domestic violence which allows her to: grab the kids, get 2 years legal aid (paid by public purse), oust dad from the house. No: not always the case, but I have seen this pattern many times.
Family law seems to attract lawyers who are primarily interested in prolonging the case to grab more money in fees.
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To put this into context for the rest of us, roughly: what proportion of allegation of domestic violence weere false, what proportion were true?
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Don't forget the situations where she's the instigator and/or active participant in the domestic violence. The man still gets the blame.
Then there's the simple fact that the man usually pays for the woman's lawyers anyway.
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Divorces seem to attract vindictive b*tches (of both genders) that want to "burn the other party to the ground". It really has nothing to do with the lawyers. They're only the weapon here. What they do or don't do merely reflects the will of the client.
Some people don't need any encouragement to slit their own throats.
An amicable separation is 5 minutes in front of the judge with no lawyers at all.
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One guy pretended to be a lawyer for two years, representing clients, arguing cases, etc., before he was caught. When he had served his time, he went right back to it..
Did you see that on TV, because that might've been suits.
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And where pray, is this Montreal?
Google is your friend :-)
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True for large cases. Not for small claims $10K (Score:2)
For cases in which a large amount is at stake, paying the cost of a good professional makes sense. Just like getting a highly competent and well trained software programmer IF your business depends upon the software.
For small claims, and little scripts you use at home, the cost of a professional who is both well trained and actually good at what they do may not be justified.
If you're involved in a law suit for $250,000 or you are making your business database avaiable via the web (where hackers abound), hi
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Once there were high priest, who divined the will of the Gods to the people that sacrificed to them, because the people were told they don't understand the will of the Gods.
Then the people thought "Bullshit, we don't need the gods, we make our own laws!"
Now there are high priest, who divine the will of the Laws to the people that sacrifice to them, because the people are told they don't understand the will of the Laws.
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That makes as much sense as assuming that effective software can be developed without incurring the cost of using software engineers.
I assume you mean computational linguists and AI researchers? Software engineers are about as much useful here as court stenotypists in trials.
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They will never be able to get through them all.
I dunno you can get through a lot of cases quickly when all you ever do is take them round the back and cut their heads off.
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Also, since you bring up rape, you should read up on Juanita Broaddrick and all the others, and how Mrs. Clinton went after them to shut them up.
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Ah yes, great britain, with its 4% muslim population, sommehow establishing a parallel legal system to spook the hicks.
(Protip: There are no sharia courts in the UK, there never have been, and the country is still as white as its ever been despite the loopy howls of mosleys successors)
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There are, but they hide them behind a name like "community arbitration panels".
Of course both parties must "agree" to use them.
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"Of course both parties must "agree" to use them."
Oh, so exactly like corporate "Third Party Arbitration" here in the US. Only "agree" is a little of a misnomer as federal law gave them legal weight via the FAA (Federal Arbitration Act) in some cases denying citizens the right to sue. Oh, and there's that pesky fact that at least one major arbitration organization (National Arbitration Forum) was caught with a wild bias towards companies (specifically Credit Card) finding in their favor 99.8% of the time.
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(Protip: There are no sharia courts in the UK, there never have been,
Well, there are a bit. Nothing even approaching any kind of official or even legal status. Just like in NI there are still alphabet gangs metering out their own justice doing peoples knees in.
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even the government and news channels are investigating them
https://www.newsdeeply.com/wom... [newsdeeply.com]
http://blogs.channel4.com/fact... [channel4.com]
corp scams (Score:2)
The last thing anyone wants is their day in court (Score:3)
It's almost always more expensive and damaging than any settlement or plea bargain you might reach.
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Lawyers don't even believe in representing themselves, so when you say plenty just what is that percentage ?
Here's an example of what happens when you don't know what you are doing involving the law
http://wtvr.com/2016/06/06/man... [wtvr.com]
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Last time I was put under collection by a local newspaper, I went Willy Wonka on them.
"You REFUSED no less than four requests to cancel! You STOLE $20 off my credit card after repeated contacts to Support to cancel! You CEASED sending the paper after failure to bill the NEXT issue, and now you demand payment for services not rendered! You will remove the debt collection from my credit history, and you GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR!"
The performance was not your average court performance, but we weren't i
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A homeless guy in my town represented himself against the city, took it all the way to the Supreme Court, and won! They ruled that the city can't deny him the right to sell his awful joke books on the sidewalk, because other people are allowed to sell things, and because it is books any subjective determination of merit is inherently content-based. Had he been selling shoes, then the city would be free to decide if it has value to the community; but speech? No, they have to give the permit.
You might misunde
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Right, everybody in an industry is going to recite the party-line answer. A personal trainer isn't going to say, "Gosh, I hire a personal trainer to make it look everybody needs one," they're going to give a PR reason like "blah blah `home blind' blah blah." If they're a professional athlete, I believe them. If they're not, then how "home blind" are they, really? Will they actually get a substandard or even lower quality workout just using their own knowledge? Is athletic training really that much of a Arti
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Actually, I'm pretty sure "home blind" is referring to a type of cognitive bias--I can't say for sure if confirmation bias, observer-expectancy effect, overconfidence effect, selective perception, something else, or a combination of any/all. In the case of our hypothetical personal trainer, what they're doing by hiring another personal trainer is ensuring that their assumptions and beliefs in the effectiveness of their routine for themselves won't blind them to reality--that they've got third-party confirm
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I think that you are one step to much into this whole conspiracy of yours. I happen to know a lot of trainers that also are extremely talented power lifters and they absolutely cannot train themselves due to what I described earlier, and they know this because when they tried they failed miserably. Despite all their knowledge and expertise they could not apply it to themselves.
And I assume that the exact same thing happens with Lawyers, if you consider how competitive the market is you would see that no Law
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If you think you found a conspiracy theory, I guess you're reading something other than what I wrote.
Lets just clarify right here that I only meant the words I said. Words I didn't say are not to be assumed, most of the potential words that you could imagine me saying that I didn't say are words I would not in fact have ever said.
Pretend you took a business class at the local community college, and the whole class was about PR for your small business. Right, that's the knowledge level for understanding what
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Perhaps that is how it works in the US, that I don't know. In my country we don't have the legions of Lawyers that you have in the US since matters and conflicts are not normally decided in court (since I don't live in a common law country) so we have exactly zero bus chasers, tv commercials and so on for Lawers and still Lawyers over here usually hire a Lawyer if they would end up in court for what ever reason.
And with regards to trainers I do train other people myself and I can honestly say that if I ever
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Perhaps that is how it works in the US, that I don't know. In my country we don't have the legions of Lawyers that you have in the US
So you probably don't even know if we have "legions of lawyers" or if you just were overly credulous. Doesn't "don't know" mean you get to make it up, or just that you don't know? Why not stop typing at "I don't know," since you're clearly not asking any useful question?
Maybe, how many lawyers we have has nothing at all to do with what is a good advertising strategy for a service industry? Why are you letting all these stereotypes about my country interfere with understanding the very very very basic claim
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What does the situation in the US have to do with anything, if the same thing happens in another country (which don't have the properties that you describe) then we can say with some degree of confidence that the reason that it is happening is the same. There is no need for Lawyers to promote their industry in my country, you cannot hire a private Lawyer at a criminal court here and we have very very few civil cases. That the US have lots of civil cases and that you have lots of bus chasers are hardly stere
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Plea bargains are only for criminal cases. This is about civil cases. And there are plenty of people who successfully represent themselves in both criminal and civil cases.
Its obvious he means an out of court settlement. And he's right.
A day in court almost always costs more, not just in actual damages but also lost productivity. This is why a credible threat of court is so damaging to businesses. The problem is that when one side can afford shyster lawyers and the other cannot that puts them at a severe disadvantage. Some people can successfully represent themselves but 99% of people cant, especially against someone who knows all the loopholes and dirty tricks of the petty c
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The civil equivalent of a "plea bargain" is a settlement. It serves the same purpose and involves the same kind of horse trading.
Why people litigate (Score:2)
It's almost always more expensive and damaging than any settlement or plea bargain you might reach.
Taking a case all the way to trial is very rare today; most settle in advance of trial.
For the few cases that do go to trial, they go to trial for different reasons. It often means either that someone has an irrational desire to spend the next two years of their life proving someone else is wrong, or it means that at least one side has evaluated the case incorrectly and is therefore unwilling to settle for a dollar amount the other side considers reasonable.
Re: This is the UK (Score:2)
Well, too many cases for her to handle alone, which is why the local lords was appointed the task by her predecessors the this then became the court system used today. Also why the title of judge in the summary is Lord Judge...
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So the small claims court then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Here in the uk it already exists in the form of the small claims court, and one can initiate it online, all the judge is really suggesting is changing the charging structure for the court fees (one can currently claim upto £100,000 via the process, but above £10,000 the fee is a percentage of the claim) and he is suggesting moving the actual hearings away from a court room and onto video conferencing instead. Oh, the whole no lawyers thing is total baloney, to become a judge one has to have been a barrister for several years, so at some point if it gets that far...
Re:So the small claims court then? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd prefer to go to Small Claims Court rather than do it online. If I take some company there then they have to come to my local court, no matter how far away they are. It makes it much easier to win because chances are they will, at most, send a local lawyer who barely understands the case or the issue, if they bother to turn up at all.
Doing it online makes it easier for them to mount a defence.
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Wrong. When you take someone to Small Claims Court the proceedings occur in the court nearest the defendant. You submit your evidence online or by mail and then they have to show up in court to defend themselves. You don't even have to show up for that part.
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There's nothing here to say it has to be 'online' as in you sitting on your sofa at home in yesterdays underpants. Given the authentication required, it could still be you have to physically go somewhere (perhaps not the local court buildings though, maybe a post office or somewhere) and sit in a booth an have a video conference (presumably after showing someone some ID or something). A far lower standard to meet than currently, but still more than nothing.
Honestly, I can't see why such a system would be ba
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More alike in Poland, I think. The e-court handles small, simple civil cases, purely electronically. Main result - great, huge acceleration of the process, a lot of simple cases solved quickly.
Downside? You really DO want to have an account. This court is used by crooks to collect on nonexistent debts, such as invoces which were already paid - there were too many such cases to consider this rare. It's enough to sue giving a slightly wrong address of the defendant... and the defendant won't even know about t
Can Lawyers Be Parties? (Score:2)
Can lawyers be a party to a suit in such a court? That is, can a lawyer represent himself as a plaintiff or defendant, or will he have to come up with a non-lawyer to represent him?
Step 2... (Score:2)
Step 1: Virtualize the judiciary system
Step 2: Out-source judiciary decisions to a "Judgement Centre" in India
Almost in time (Score:2)
Well, Doc did say that it would happen by 2015. Close.
E-Trial (Score:2)
Sounds like what you need is E-Trial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This is for civil small claims (Score:3)
This is for civil small claims cases, in which lawyers are rarely involved and which are largely set up to support people litigating in person.
They tend to be more about arbitration of unpaid invoices or failure to provide a service that's been paid for etc. I have a couple of friends who have used the small claims courts either against non-paying customers or companies that have stiffed them. In all cases they attended in person and were supported by the court staff rather than lawyers, and they all had good things to say about the staff and the system in principal.
These are very much not cases where high paid lawyers square up against each other and slog it out in a dramatic battle of rhetoric. In fact I've heard from a number of people that the judges who preside tend to take a dim view of trained lawyers trying to steamroller or confuse non-lawyers on the other side. These are not cases involving complex points of law. If the case gets more complex then it may be referred to a higher court.
This proposal makes a lot of sense to me for those sorts of cases. While the cost of using the small claims court can put people off using it, the time and disruption, especially if they are running a business, can be more of an impediment. The ability to handle much of the case without having to attend in person would make the whole system much better, and if it reduced the costs it would make the small claims court more accessible to many people to seek redress from companies. There's also lots of potential to design the online system in such a way as to provide lots of help and advice to non-legal people to they can make their case batter, which should also make the whole process more effective and fair.
No Way (Score:2)
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