The Electronic Filing system in the courts of England and Wales – a case study for Vietnam and recommendations

Over the years, civil disputes have constantly increased, in proportion to the size of the population and the growth of the economy. The number of cases, which the Courts have to accept and settle, soared with the nature of significant complexity. In addition, the Courts are obliged to lay off their staff according to Resolution No. 39-NQ/TW dated April 17, 2015 of the Politburo. These challenges raise the serious question on the capacity of the Vietnamese court system to meet and handle the massive workload. In the context that Vietnam has approached and fostered the national digital transformation process, not only the State administrative management, but also civil dispute settlement may directly benefit by particular breakthroughs: (i) Focusing on enhancing mechanisms and policies, synchronously developing institutional, infrastructural, platforms and human resources capability for digital transformation; (ii) Improving the rate of online processing of administrative procedures, the quality of online public services provision, the development of residential data applications, electronic identification and authentication. The advances may allow the Courts to apply the technology for arranging the routine paperwork, document controlling and transmittal.

As analyzed above, along with reference to the experience of the Courts of England and Wales in the application of information technology, digitalizing data to enable participants to submit their litigation documents online; then applying Machine learning/ Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) during the classification, sorting dossier process, analysis of the issued judgments for enhance the predictability when resolving civil disputes, this paper provides recommendations for the Vietnamese court system to study and apply step-by-step pilot programmes that helps to reduce the workload of Courts, time and cost saving of stakeholders during the civil dispute resolution. To materialize that, two key recommendation groups are provided: (i) Reforming policy and legislations on deployment of information technology in civil litigation; (ii) Building the institutional capacity, required infrastructure, facility and manpower for the Court’s electronic filing system.

Keywords: England and Wales, Vietnam, Courts, civil litigation, e-filings

This article was published in the Vietnam Journal of Legal Sciences with the following citation:

Nguyen, T. H., & Ho, V. P. (2023). Digital transformation of civil court proceedings: Lessons learned from the electronic filing system of the courts of England and Wales. Vietnam Journal of Legal Sciences, 11(171), 100–114.