CHENNAI: Going digital being the catch word across all the sectors, the legal fraternity too has been making attempts to jump on to this bandwagon, but has met with little success.
As of now, case status, details and hearing dates are available on the court website, but the judiciary in 2014 introduced an SMS system to benefit both advocates and litigants, which saw negligible patronage.
Instead of going online and hunting for the case details, advocates and litigants have the option of getting the cases lined up for the day in the morning itself through an SMS by registering their numbers in the court while filing the petition.
“It is pretty useful that we are informed in the morning about the cases and the same information can be accessed by the litigants as well, which brings transparency,” said Chitra Sampath, senior counsel.
However, Sampath said that daily updates only come from the city civil court and not the High Court and that the High Court cases are not updated. Other advocates also agree that the SMS service by the High Court is not very efficient as it does not update properly.
However, many advocates are still not using this service, either because they are simply unaware of the option or because they prefer to continue the old school way, but mostly because most advocates are more comfortable with the services provided by private operators.
“The court initiative hasn’t really picked up yet, so we are continuing with our private operators since the cost is also very competitive and the services are efficient,” said advocate Sathish Kumar. He and his team of advocates all get their schedule for the day in the morning.
The advocates simply have to register with the operator and get the number of cases listed and then the case numbers and courts. “I have been using a private probate player service called Marbury for the last three years and pay about `1,000-1,500 annually for the service. It is extremely efficient and makes things easier for us,” said advocate P B Balaji.
However, these services are only limited to the High Court. So most lower court advocates have no idea about these services. But Balaji said that some private operators were experimenting with lower courts as well in the recent past but advocates from the lower courts still depend on the lists outside the courts or online portals to find out about their listings.