EBRD Assessment on Readiness for Online Courts

The Cross-Regional Court Performance Assessment was conducted under the Regional Framework Project on Digital Transformation of Courts - Development of Online Courts for Small Claims. This initiative is led by the Legal Transition Programme (LTP), within the legal department of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), funded by the EBRD Special Shareholder Fund and implemented in partnership with Dentons law firm. The overarching aim of the framework project is to assist EBRD countries of operations (CoOs) in leveraging IT solutions to improve access to dispute resolution services and improve contract enforcement for SMEs by introducing online courts for small claims.

The Assessment explores whether the key preconditions for the introduction of an online court initiative are in place in each of the assessed economies. The Assessment includes data from 17 economies included in country profiles.

The results of the Assessment were used to create a Guide with a set of actionable recommendations for policy makers on how to create a roadmap for the successful implementation of online courts. For more information on the Guide, please click here. 

This initiative was inspired by a number of jurisdictions, such as the UK with its Money Claim Online service and Canada with its Civil Resolution Tribunal, which introduced successful online courts specialising in the resolution of civil and commercial matters long before the pandemic.

While there is no universally accepted definition of "online courts", for the purposes of this project, online courts shall mean a dispute resolution proceeding conducted by default online, starting from claim submission and ending with the delivery of judgement, accessible directly to litigants and their representatives and augmented by services and tools to ease access to justice and litigant participation.

• Contribute to better access to justice, in particular for smaller businesses;
• Saves the costs of attending court and related fees;
• Shorten the time of court proceedings and overall, of dispute settlement;
• Incentivise litigants to resolve disputes more independently (using customized templates and available ADR services);
• Modernise traditional justice by means of information and communications technology;
• Ultimately improve contract enforcement in commercial courts.

The Assessment was conducted by employing the developed Maturity Level Assessment Tool to assess the current status of commercial justice in selected EBRD economies and the possibilities for establishing online courts under four key dimensions:

(i) Policies and infrastructure for E-justice;
(ii) Commercial Dispute Resolution;
(iii) Uncontested Procedures for Enforcing a Claim; and
(iv) Small Claims Procedures.

The data was collected from respondents in each country and reviewed by the project team. Conclusions were prepared by the project team and reviewed by an Advisory Panel.