As provincial courthouses began closing doors to all but emergency cases and moving matters online, it became increasingly difficult for anyone needing, providing or studying court services to keep up. Professor Alyssa King came up with a solution to track and archive the different COVID-related changes to court and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures in each jurisdiction. 

“I want to help people trying to respond to the procedural emergency that follows from the public health emergency,” she says “and I hope that our team can contribute to the global effort to document this extraordinary period for justice systems around the world.”

King’s idea came about in mid-March when she was teaching her Civil Procedure class. “Courts at various levels in many provinces were continuing to run at least partially on paper documents, but they started expanding their ability to work with electronic documents and hold hearings remotely, so they could continue operating,” she says. “Some provinces also suspended the statute of limitations.  

“I started posting things to my course website as the original changes were coming out,” she adds. “I quickly realized that the information was useful to people beyond students in my course. I mentioned the idea on “civ pro” Twitter (#civpro) and a bunch of other people seemed interested.”

To reach a broader audience and do it quickly, she called her colleague, Professor Samuel Dahan, Director of the Conflict Analytics Lab (CAL). “Samuel has done work on online dispute resolution mechanisms that may be useful to institutions that need to move online and handle volume with staff working at less than 100 per cent,” she says. Dahan and the CAL were already busy with MyOpenCourt, a platform to help people connect to pro bono help with employment disputes. Still, “Samuel was immediately in, and willing to put a portion of the Conflict Analytics website at my disposal.” 

That portion is the “COVID and the Courts” web page, aptly positioned within the CAL’s site. 

The Conflict Analytics Lab has been looking at ways to use big data to predict dispute outcomes and to use online tools to guide litigants. “There’s a fit between the lab’s use of online methods to help people access justice, and the needs of courts and ADR providers that are trying to keep functioning during a pandemic,” King explains. “Many problems related to access exist across different types of public and private institutions and they can learn a lot from each other.” 

Having said that, King finds the needs of courts and ADR providers are distinct in some respects. “Courts are supported by and representative of the state,” she says. “Their mandate is not just to resolve disputes, although they do a lot of that, but to create outcomes that comport with the law or with shared understandings of justice. Because Parliament needs the ability to identify and react to problems in how the current law works and because courts build up a body of precedent, judicial actions need to be open to public scrutiny in a way that is not true of all ADR providers. That adds another piece to the access puzzle. It’s hard enough to assemble the judge, lawyers and parties, but courts also need to find ways to let the public in.”

Once her web presence was secured, King assembled her team. “I asked my Civil Procedure students if anyone was interested in working on the project,” she recalls. “Paul Burry (Law’21) immediately said yes. I then remembered that Carlos Faustino (Law’21), a student in my Contracts class the year before, had told me he was interested in work related to human rights. The ability of our courts to function will have significant impact on the rights of Canadians. Carlos was in.” 

King has a few audiences in mind for the “COVID and the Courts” web page. “I’d like it to be useful to people working in and around courts, including court staff and lawyers who want to compare what is happening in other jurisdictions, and to journalists,” she says. “I also hope to document what is going on in Canada for other researchers as we try to make sense of procedural evolution that may come out of this period. 

“I’d love to host posts from other proceduralists and to help direct Canadians to good work done on other jurisdictions, like the work that is being done documenting developments in the U.K. and the U.S.,” she adds. 

To keep up with the latest developments of the impact of COVID on the courts and to learn more about it, check out Professor King on Twitter (@AlyssaESKing) or the “COVID and the Courts” page on the Conflict Analytics site. “We’re just getting started and we’d love to hear from you!” exclaims King. 

By Lisa Graham