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A new online portal meant to streamline access to Ontario’s court system is leaving some lawyers grappling with unpredictable delays and facing new hurdles in managing their cases, they say months after the platform’s initial rollout.
The Ontario Courts Public Portal launched in Toronto in the fall, with the purpose of allowing people to file documents, pay fees and find virtual links for court hearings in non-criminal matters, including Superior Court family, civil, small claims, bankruptcy, Divisional Court and enforcement cases, as well as provincial court family cases.
Digital access to criminal cases is set to expand next year in Phase 2, and the Ontario government is looking to have the system — which it touts as more transparent and accessible — deployed across the province by 2030.
While welcoming the push toward a more modern court system, some lawyers say the new system is unintuitive and difficult to navigate, with growing pains that are bogging down the legal process and risk undermining public confidence in the courts.
Tasks that used to take a day or two — such as scheduling a motion or getting a statement of claim issued in a lawsuit — can now take weeks, delays that then snowball as the case plays out, they say.
Meanwhile, the new portal isn’t fully synced up with the Superior Court of Justice’s mandatory document-sharing platform, and might not show every case a lawyer is participating in, the lawyers say. It’s also no longer possible to search for a case online using the name of one of the parties involved, a function that was available on the portal’s predecessor.
Newer system should be an improvement: lawyer
Cases can be looked up using the file number but the only way to get that number is to go to a public terminal at a courthouse, which is “significantly more cumbersome” and undermines the open court principle, said Jay Nathwani, a construction lawyer based in Toronto.
“If you’re going to roll out a new online portal, it’s reasonable to expect that it works at least as well, if not better, than the system that it’s replacing,” Nathwani said in a recent interview.
“We should not be accepting new systems that make everybody’s lives more difficult.”
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Nathwani’s firm submitted a requisition to schedule a motion in October, and by mid-December, it still wasn’t marked as booked in the online portal, he said. No materials can be filed until the hearing shows up in the portal, he said, and the lag is disrupting lawyers’ timelines.
His office also found that claims filed through the portal weren’t issued quickly, which is particularly concerning when statutory limitation periods — the maximum time to start a legal action — are looming, he said.
Even though the claims are backdated to the day of submission, lawyers might not be informed of a crucial issue with the document until it’s too late, he said.
“We used to be able to get that feedback right away,” and fix it before the deadline, but that’s not the case anymore, he said.
“It’s the kind of thing that keeps lawyers up at night.”
His firm is submitting documents well in advance of the deadline, he said, “but this is an issue that doesn’t need to exist (and) it didn’t used to exist.”
The uncertainty issue
Urgent claims can still be filed in person, on paper, but the court has strict criteria for what it considers to be urgent, said Eric Sherkin, a commercial litigation lawyer in Toronto.
Filing online now comes with a long, unpredictable wait, he said in a recent interview, adding he’s waited up to four weeks for some claims to be issued after they were filed.
The uncertainty trickles down to clients, he said.
“It creates a bit of a lack of confidence of participants in the system if their lawyers are … unclear as to when they’ll be able to even get documents back from the court,” he said.
(Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)
Sherkin also recalled a stressful morning trying to access a hearing he’d booked in civil practice court, where lawyers go to schedule longer or more complex motions.
The hearing was marked as scheduled in the portal, but neither he nor opposing counsel had received a videoconference link, and the matter was set to start in half an hour. When he reached out to court staff, they told him to look in the portal, but the link was nowhere to be found, he said.
Eventually, Sherkin said staff sent him what he needed, but by then the hearing had already begun. Thankfully, his matter had not yet been called, but it could easily have gone the other way, he said.
“What happens if I just don’t get it, no one’s checking the email, and I miss the scheduling hearing, and now I have to report back to my client … who knew I was attending court that morning to get a motion date,” he said.
Lawyers are having to recalibrate some aspects of how they practise in light of these “snafus,” Sherkin said.
“I’m sure it will improve, but for now, it’s just sort of being aware that … it’s gotten slower rather than faster,” he said.
Province says it is getting feedback, making changes
A spokesperson for Attorney General Doug Downey said that more than 25,000 people have registered for the portal since it launched in October, and more than 73,000 submissions have been received.
“We are working closely with users and justice sector partners to gather real-time feedback and continuously improve the portal. Throughout the multi-phased implementation process, the portal will remain user-centred, transparent, and we will ensure ongoing engagement through consultations and demonstrations,” Julia Facca said in an email.
The Ontario Bar Association said the new portal has been well received by its members, and there is ongoing communication between the courts, the province and the profession regarding the rollout.
Any issues raised by the association on behalf of its members have been quickly addressed, said Katy Commisso, the organization’s president.
“There’s some tweaks, there’s some there’s some growing pains, there’s some things going on, but they’re well worth the positive implications of this new platform,” Commisso said.
“The overall feedback we’ve been getting at the OBA from our members is that this has been … one of the smoother transitions, if not the smoothest, in terms of the digital transformations we’ve been seeing in the justice sector.”
