Digital court proceedings: Main hearing via video call

Instead of traveling all over Germany for a court hearing, trial participants are increasingly able to join in via video call. The 31st German IT Court Conference in Saarbrücken dealt with the challenges of digitalization in the legal system.

Landau, September 27, 2022: Court hearings are becoming increasingly digital.

Hearings are held via video call, and in some cases even entire main hearings are held as hybrid proceedings. The digital formats save time, costs and protect the environment. The number of digital hearings has increased significantly since the coronavirus pandemic. However, the legal basis for this existed long before the pandemic: since 2002, courts have been able to allow the parties to the proceedings to join in via video and audio transmission. This is regulated in Section 128a of the Code of Civil Procedure. At the beginning of 2022, Federal Minister of Justice Buschmann announced a draft law that would also regulate the use of digital technology in criminal proceedings.

Digital main hearings are controversial among lawyers and judges. According to a survey conducted by anwalt.de in June 2022, 58% of the lawyers surveyed are in favor of court hearings via video conference in principle. However, 90 percent do not consider digital proceedings to be useful in criminal proceedings.

Digital general meetings were a hot topic at the first IT Court Day since the start of the pandemic. Unisys Deutschland GmbH, a global IT service provider and long-standing outsourcing partner of the judiciary in Bavaria, was involved in the comprehensive introduction of electronic case files (eFiles) in Bavaria as part of an overarching project. This year, they presented their solution approach for digital hearings together with the software provider Linkando from Landau.

Volker Wiora, CEO and founder of Linkando, says: "The digitalization of court proceedings is a sensitive issue. On the one hand, the safety of witnesses and efficient court proceedings from a technical and legal perspective must be guaranteed. On the other hand, in view of climate change, it is difficult to justify the fact that witnesses sometimes have to travel all over Germany for a two-minute testimony."

Among other things, the IT Court Day dealt with issues such as the authentication of witnesses in the context of digital hearings and digital participation options for the public. The question of exactly which court processes could be digitized was also discussed. It would also be necessary to create digital side rooms such as a judge's chambers for consultation and to ensure the security of witnesses.

"An alternative solution would be digital hearing rooms in local courts," says Thomas Ellegast, Sr. Manager Delivery Business Process Solutions at Unisys. "This would shorten the journey for witnesses, but still create a safe environment for witness testimony. It would also ensure a minimum standard of technological quality for the video transmission and hardware used."

About Unisys
Unisys is a global information technology company that helps solve the most pressing IT and business challenges for many of the world's largest organizations and government agencies. Unisys has more than 20,000 employees serving clients around the world. Unisys delivers state-of-the-art integrated solutions, including cloud and infrastructure services, application services, security solutions and high-end server technology to government, financial, industrial and commercial organizations.

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