Sherluck Jun Villegas

REACTION PAPER ON BENCH AND BAR 2015

Bench and Bar 2015 is very informative and gives a lot of information

about the future of our justice system. Electronic filing in court has been

used already by countries like United States and Singapore. It has been

successful in those countries that is why there is no reason why it can’t be

successfully adopted by the Philippines.

Electronic Filing and conducting hearing via video conference sounds

easy but it’s not. They say that it would reduce the cost of the litigation, save

papers, save spaces and time but for me, technology and computers and soft

copies cannot equally place the position of hard copies and actual hearing in

terms of security. Technology is still under process and cannot be relied on.

Instead of looking forward to its advantages, in the Philippines I think it is not

yet the proper time to adopt this.

The training and adoption of this new system will change a lot of things

especially our Rules of Court. Training will involve a lot of people especially

Judges in which case, older judges are not that tech savvy to apply those

difficult applications. The cost of paying this system will also be subject to

many issues and controversies including the system provider, the

applications to be used, compatibility issues, virus, connection etc.

Issues will also arise during the litigation process where one counsel is

in another are defending his client online. This is really a good idea but not

feasible.

Too many issues in adoption of this system that will be too costly for us

and just make confusion and further delay to existing court cases. For

example, what will happen if there are technical problems during filing?

What if the document sent for filing cannot be opened? Can it be declared

default? What if there are multiple parties and other party cannot connect in

the system?

Electronic filing and video conference hearing will face a lot of

problems. It sounds easy enough. A few clicks, and off it goes. No more

running down the street, sometimes literally, to make a filing deadline. No

more waiting frantically for a courier’s call confirming that your filing made it

on time. No more time-consuming calls to the clerk’s office verifying that

your pleadings, which you mailed, were received and were actually and

timely filed. The coordination of copies and couriers has now been replaced

by simple, electronic tasks—tasks that you can do from your desk and that

you do not even need to complete until minutes before the deadline. But this

is not the case. After all, many people manage lots of transactions, such as

banking and shopping transactions, electronically every day.

But whether you are a seasoned or novice filer, you still need to

recognize and avoid the new traps of electronic filing. Many of the risks in e-

filing are obvious. Some are not. Yet, with some exceptions, most mistakes

primarily result in one thing that makes all litigators shudder: missing a

deadline.

So bottom-line is, do we adopt the electronic filing system in the

Philippines? For me it is a matter that we can consider viewing its future

benefits. However, I suggest that we can have a pilot test on small claims

court and check the efficiency of the new system. A now office will also be

created under the supervision of the Supreme Court to supervise and restrict

this new system.

This will take a long time and very costly but if this becomes

successful, then justice system in the Philippines will take a very large leap

forward.