Acting Chief Justice Mario Michel opened the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court’s 2025 law year on Friday in St. Lucia, highlighting the recent implementation of the e-litigation portal in all member states, the court’s use of AI technology, and the launch of a public education programme, among other topics.
“Each year, this special sitting provides us with an opportunity to collectively reflect on the challenges experienced and the successes attained by the … ECSC, and on the challenges and successes which lie ahead,” Mr. Michel said in the speech, which was broadcast live in the VI and other ECSC jurisdictions.
In acting as chief justice, Mr. Michel replaces Virgin Gorda native Dame Janice Pereira, who held the position for 12 years. The first woman to be appointed to the role, Dame Janice is also the longest-serving chief justice of the ECSC.
E-litigation portal
The recent successes that Mr. Michel listed Friday included the completion of “all phases of the electronic litigation portal in all of the member states and territories of the court.”
The portal digitises the court’s filing and case-management systems, significantly reducing the use of paper in court offices.
It was first adopted in November 2018 in the Virgin Islands, when the territory’s courts began using it for civil matters. Last spring, the VI was also the first to implement the criminal module of the ECSC’s e-litigation portal, which is used by the High Court and Magistrates’ Court to process criminal proceedings.
“The [adoption] process was completed in Montserrat in December 2024, from when all criminal cases in Montserrat had to be filed on the e-litigation portal,” Mr. Michel said Friday, adding, “In the six years since it was first introduced, the e-litigation portal has successfully transformed what was a time-consuming and resource-intensive process of filing and serving court documents into one which is efficient, cost-effective, transparent and reliable.”
Saving paper
Mr. Michel noted the large amount of paper that previously had been needed before the implementation of the e-litigation portal.
“Even though some of the estimates may be overstated or understated, the results are nonetheless astonishing,” he said. “And it is not the trees alone which benefit from this enormous saving of paper. The staff of the court offices who were required to sort and manage these volumes of paper must be much happier campers now with 2.5 million sheets of paper less to sort and manage. The lawyers, the judges and all others who had to work with these volumes of paper have all been rescued from the prison of printed paper to which they were confined for several years.”
AI technology
The justice also highlighted the use of AI technology to operate “a speech-to-text transcription system in courtrooms where civil cases are being heard.”
“The technology is expected to deliver court transcripts in nearly real time with 95 percent accuracy,” Mr. Michel added.
Known as the FTR Justice Cloud platform, the system is expected to improve the accuracy of court transcripts and reduce the wait times to access them, according to the justice.
“Delays in the production of transcripts had reached near crisis proportions in some of our member states and territories and were causing a backlog in the hearing of appeals in the affected countries,” Mr. Michel said. “With the introduction of this AI technology, these embarrassing delays of weeks, months and sometimes even years for the production of transcripts should come to an end, and transcripts from the territories where the technology has been installed should be produced in days and not weeks, months or years from the hearing of the case.”
In 2024, the technology was implemented in St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica, according to the justice.
By July, he added, the ECSC expects the technology to be installed in at least one courtroom in the VI as well as in St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla and Montserrat.
Education programme
Mr. Michel also gave an update on an education programme launched last year as a way to help the public better understand the court and its processes.
“But is our court system and its various components understood by the public?” he asked. “The answer is a resounding no. And this lack of understanding is not restricted to the hypothetical man on the street. It exists too amongst men and women in every strata of the countries in this common juridical space that we share. The same is true of the awareness of our citizenry about the judicial officers who man the court system.”
He added that some components of the programme, such as visits to community colleges and a lecture series, have already commenced.
VI visit
While he has already visited colleges in other member states and territories, Mr. Michel said he plans to visit the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College in the VI in the first term of this law year, along with community colleges in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
“The school visits and interactive exchanges with the students were, for me, very valuable to both the court and the students in terms of breaking down barriers between the community and the court and demystifying law and its practices and procedures,” Mr. Michel said, adding, “The second component of the public education programme, which was started in 2024, is the lecture series, which aims to address issues of interest and concern to the bench, the bar and the public.”
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