Sheffield law firm Taylor&Emmet helps modernise courts with e-bundling

Partner Lucy Rodgers and her assistant Rebecca Kelly have pioneered the implementation of e-bundles, standardising the process of submitting evidence to South Yorkshire’s judiciary.

Taylor&Emmet is one of only two firms of solicitors involved in a working group charged with streamlining the process of enabling electronic court bundles to be used routinely in private family law matters.

The Sheffield-based law firm’s IT director Nigel Hoar researched a suitable off the shelf solution and testing began with court staff late last year.

Ms Rodgers said: “Court bundles can run to hundreds of pages and it quickly became apparent during the first lockdown that generating the usual paper copies was impossible when we were all working from home.

“We were told repeatedly by court staff there were problems accepting e-bundles via email, which was a great source of frustration, and after discussing the issue with a couple of judges, it was clear something needed to change.”

Meetings were held over a number of months to identify barriers to the adoption of e-bundles and find workable solutions.

Following the success of trials, Ms Rodgers helped to draft a new Local Practice Direction that has been issued by the Designated Family Judge for South Yorkshire.

So far, no problems have arisen and everyone is following the e-bundle process.

“I’ve been very conscious whilst developing e-bundling that I am not only representing Taylor&Emmet, but also the entire family law profession locally and it was crucial to find a system that suited everyone,” Ms Rodgers said.

She added: “We worked to satisfy the courts’ issues around data security and the feedback so far has been very positive, particularly relating to ease of access.”

E-bundling is now used in all of South Yorkshire’s family courts. Instead of solicitors having to manually collate paper documents, dedicated software paginates the bundle automatically and generates a PDF. A secure link is then emailed to all relevant parties.

This is contributing significantly to Taylor&Emmet’s goal of reducing paper consumption by 50 per cent by November.

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