Even our progressively tech-savvy world might not yet be ready for self-service justice. But given the backlog crisis hampering the UK court system right now, there’s a strong argument for giving self-service technology more of a role in legal administration.
The backlog of court cases has been an issue since the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite reaching record levels some time ago, the issue is still getting worse, not better. The backlog at Crown Court rose 10% between September 2023 and 2024 to reach 73,105, while at Magistrate’s Courts it has reached a staggering 333,349.
The Law Society has rightly pointed out that it will take significant investment in resources and infrastructure to turn the situation around and reset the court system on a more efficient, modern footing. That being the case, the government could do a lot worse than direct some of that investment towards installing kiosks at courts.
Fast and Flexible
There are two things that kiosks excel at in particular that make them tailor-made for helping make court operations more streamlined and efficient. One, they speed everything up. From placing orders in fast-food restaurants to managing check-in for appointments at clinics and hospitals, it’s been demonstrated time and time again that kiosks help to cut wait times, get tasks done faster, and increase throughput. And when you’re trying to clear a backlog of tens of thousands of legal cases, the latter is gold dust.
Two, kiosks are incredibly versatile and flexible. You can run any number of tasks from a single unit. And this suits legal processes down to a tee. One of the reasons the backlog crisis has snowballed out of control is because courts handle so much all under one roof. Magistrates Court complexes don’t just handle criminal cases like the Crown Courts. They also double up as civil courts – Family Courts for divorce and child access and support hearings, the County Courts for financial disputes.
Smoothing out Administration
The biggest barrier to making court processes more efficient is not so much legal complexities as administrative bottlenecks. The things that cause the biggest delays are things like paperwork, scheduling and having to wait on hard-pressed court staff to complete simple tasks that people could do for themselves if they had the means to. Kiosks give them those means.
The full list of things you could use kiosks for in a legal setting would be very long indeed. But a non-exhaustive list would include visitors using kiosks to check in on arrival, looking up details about when and where hearings are taking place, getting advice on anything the attendee needs to do before the hearing, and basic wayfinding.
Kiosks can be used for accessing and filing court documents, with the added benefit that digital forms and submissions reduce paperwork, they don’t need to be filed and delivered to individual courts manually, and can be accessed again on demand. Similarly, post-hearing tasks like paying fines can be carried out at a kiosk.
This level of autonomy for attendees, combined with digital automation, would serve to streamline processes and increase efficiency in several ways. Apart from simply being faster, it would reduce errors and unnecessary administrative delays caused by missing or misfiled documents, while also freeing up court clerks and other staff to focus on helping attendees with more complicated tasks.
