Backwards innovation, as one lawyer rightly calls it. From now on, Antwerp barristers must once again submit all documents in paper form to the court registry. Email is out of the question.
Printing everything out has become too expensive, according to the Antwerp judiciary. So lawyers have to print everything themselves. The court then scans everything again so that a digital file can still be created.
Lawyer Tim Desemet is not impressed: “It puts extra time pressure on our staff, who would otherwise have had until midnight to submit a submission at the touch of a button. Now they have to go to the court registry between 1.30 pm and 4.00 pm. That means extra journeys and extra costs for our clients.”
“We’re living in the 21st century. Millions have been invested in the justice system, yet we’re being catapulted 50 years back in time,” VRT News quotes lawyer Simon Boons as saying.
Clients in particular will bear the brunt of this, says Walter Damen. “We have to make another trip – by car, by bus or on foot – to the courthouse. That takes us back 20 years in time. At a time when people are saying that everything should be done via computers and that everything should be digitised, we are now having to go back to paper.”
Attention is once again turning to Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden (CD&V), who could also make digital files legally valid. A royal decree is expected to be finalised before the end of this year.
