Taking A Shot: Access To Justice, Judging And Ecourt

Access to Justice issues have shown us that our traditional adversarial dispute resolution model is slow, costly, divisive and complex - for both self represented litigants and those with lawyers. Addressing these issues through the provision of information to litigants has not been enough. Family Justice reports speak of the need for "culture change" and judicial leadership in affecting change. Judges have created options to the traditional adversarial model with processes such as Settlement Conferences, Binding Settlement Conferences, Informal Trials and Case Management. COVID19 has "forced" courts to embrace Virtual and telephone proceedings. There are now choices in Court based, Judicially-run dispute resolution processes. Nova Scotia's Supreme Court, Family Division has a process "add" - an eCourt Pilot instituting an electronic, chat-based Court process that gives litigants and Judges a new "choice" of process.