THis is interesting. I wonder how they calculated their cost. No wait. Maybe I don't even want to know. This should just be starting out. Well, most people prefer paper documents than screen documents. In the case for e-filing legal paperwork, it's going to save tonnes of paper, if done correctly of course, but not that the lawyers care.SEPT 30, 2003
E-filing? It's more paperwork, more cost
Courts to slash e-filing fees after survey shows up variety of problems; even judges don't find system easy to use
By Selina Lum and Karen Ho
WHEN electronic filing arrived at Singapore courts three years ago, technology was meant to speed up the legal process, link lawyers' firms with the courts seamlessly and do away with paperwork.
Now a survey of law firms has shown that things have not turned out that way at all.
Instead, the firms say e-filing has proven time-consuming, added to their workload and resulted in higher costs for clients.
And even firms that embraced change most speedily are taking no chances - they still keep paper records of all their e-documents.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced measures to improve the $29 million e-filing system, following recommendations by a review committee appointed by Chief Justice Yong Pung How earlier this year.
The committee found that even judges and judicial officers did not use the system, and preferred to rely on hard copies of documents.
The instability and slowness of the e-system meant they did not gain much in productivity or efficiency either.
From Oct 15, all e-filing fees will be slashed by 20 per cent, except for fees for lawyers to serve papers on another party. The 15 per cent surcharge for filings at the service bureaus at the City Hall Building and Apollo Centre will also be removed.
Penalty charges for filings rejected by the system will either be waived or capped at $25.
And trial bundles, which are usually voluminous, will no longer have to be e-filed. That will make for 'significant savings', the Supreme Court said in a statement yesterday.
Implemented on March 1, 2000, the e-system was meant for lawyers to file and serve documents electronically and for the courts to store and retrieve documents.
It was to pave the way for paperless courts, save physical storage costs and cut long queues at the courts' registry counters.
Big firms bought into the e-system more speedily than medium-sized ones and small firms were slowest to adapt.
The review team noted several benefits of the system, including the fact that law firms can file documents 24 hours a day.
Still, the rumbles of unhappiness evident from Day 1 came through clearly in the survey of 136 out of the 776 law practices here.
This is a sampling of what emerged:
Two-thirds said e-filing had increased the time spent filing documents. Scanning documents was time-consuming, and if there was a transmission glitch, everything had to be scanned all over again.
Almost nine in 10 - and all the large firms - said e-filing increased the cost of litigation for their clients.
Four in five - and all the large firms - printed out hard copies of documents filed in the courts.
While the review committee noted that the e-system had 'made lawyers jump from the 19th century to the 21st', there were technical, design and cost problems to be addressed.
The most pressing need was to deal with the cost issues raised by the firms, it felt.
Lawyers interviewed yesterday welcomed the news that e-filing charges would be cut, saying the operational costs have proven 'prohibitive', especially for small and medium-sized firms.
Sole proprietor Amolat Singh said clients will enjoy direct savings from the doing-away with the filing of trial bundles, which can range from a few hundred to more than 1,000 pages per case.
Now it costs $1 per page, billed to the client.
Mr Simon Tan, a director of Attorneys Inc. LLC, thought the e-system was simply 'a white elephant because no one really refers to these electronic documents in court'.
Copyright @ 2003 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.