Meeting With The Director Of The e-Court Division

The KLBC CPCLC highlighted to the e-Court Division that the above was a recurring problem which only began to surface from 2020 onwards. The issue also arises even when the only annotation to the PDF documents is page pagination.The e-Court Division will liaise with the developer on this issue and review whether the E-Filing System is in need of an update/upgrade to accommodate new and/or improved software. A working committee of the CPCLC will also be formed to liaise with the e-Court Division on this issue to work together towards resolving the same.

The e-Court Division informed us that following the previous request by the KLBC CPCLC for steps to be taken to address the delay being faced by certain members in respect of e-review proceedings, the Courts are considering implementing staggered timing for e-reviews. This is still a work-in-progress and subject to management proposal.In the interim, the e-Court Division also requested the KLBC CPCLC to inform members that the option is available for parties to request for Case Managements to be held physically and/or by way of Zoom depending on the necessity and/or complexity of the matter. The KLBC CPCLC has also requested for the e-Court Division to consider introducing teleconferencing as a further alternative to e-reviews in the event there are limited Zoom accounts. The Director took note of the suggestion and would bring it to the attention of the Registrar of the Federal Court for their consideration.

The KLBC CPCLC highlighted to the e-Court Division that there members are presently required to physically attend Court to file documents for manual filing matters, and are no longer able to do so by way of courier. This brings an additional burden on parties, especially when the relevant Court and the solicitors are in different states.The e-Court Division informed us that the Courts are exploring the option of digitising manual filing matters to enable lawyers to file future documents by way of e-filing. In the meantime, the e-Court Division and the KLBC CPCLC discussed several interim alternatives which the e-Court Division will seek management approval for.

The KLBC CPCLC raised the above issue to the e-Court Division and sought for feedback on whether the above request could be implemented to enable parties to have ease in referring to and using documents filed and downloaded from the EFS System.The e-Court Division informed us that this was not feasible due to security reasons which requires all documents downloaded from the EFS System to be locked and protected. Accordingly, the e-Court Division requested that members, where possible, highlight and/or bookmark documents prior to uploading and filing the same on the EFS System.

We raised the above proposal to the e-Court Division in light of feedback received from several members seeking to protect the confidentiality of garnishee applications before the appropriate orders are obtained.However, the e-Court Division informed us that the EFS system is not programmed to enable only certain documents to be sealed and/or for documents to be sealed only against certain parties. In essence, if a file was to be sealed, the entire file would be sealed and even the parties to the proceedings would not have access to the same.Therefore, the e-Court Division advices that if there are any parties whom are of the view that the matter should be confidential and/or blocked from public access, an application should and can be made to the Court for the relevant directions and/or orders to seal the file.

The Court took note of the suggestion and will look into whether it would be possible to upgrade the existing EFS System in order to implement the above proposal.