The fear of SARS and the stringent quarantining procedure have swayed many businesses to put into action their contingency plans. The situation of the legal industry is equally worrying, if not more than the other professions. If the lawyer handling your case has to undergo home confinement or if his office building is sealed off for quarantine, your urgent legal matters will come to a halt, settlement negotiation may need to be temporarily suspended.

The situation is particularly worrying for sole practitioners, when there is no other contingent plan in place, they are recommended to liaise with another firm to draw up contingency arrangements whereby in the event of quarantine of the firm, the other firm will act as the quarantined firm's agent. Obviously, this arrangement is not quite satisfactory from clients' point of view. The clients have no way of knowing whether the agent firm has the specialty to handle their cases, not to mention the time and extra costs involved in having to give another brief of the case all over again to the agent firm.

The above problems could have been resolved if the lawyer of the closed-off law firm building or the home-confined lawyer can work from another location other than his office building. In this situation, Themis PMS ("PMS"), an online practice management system developed by i-LegalService Limited may be the perfect solution.

Themis PMS

PMS is an Internet based document and practice management application designed for the day-to-day running of a Hong Kong law firm. It enables law firms to store all their documents on the PMS secured server, which is located at the Tradelink secure data center, and retrieve them from anywhere via a secure Internet connection. Hence, even when a building is closed-off for quarantine, lawyers can still continue on with their work at their virtual law office anytime anywhere, the delay in handling client's case can be kept to the minimal.

Up to the time of writing, the travellers' warning imposed against Hong Kong by the World Health Organisation has yet to be withdrawn. With the SARS epidemic still uncontrollable, travellers are deterred from coming to Hong Kong. Take the example of the complex multi-million dollar commercial dispute again. The success of the case depends very much on the evidence of an expert witness who resides in England. However, the witness has decided not to come to Hong Kong to testify because of SARS. In the past, the absence of this witness would have been disastrous to the case. Nevertheless, with PMS in place and the recent opening of the "Technology Court" by the Judiciary of Hong Kong in April this year, it does not matter where these witnesses are, they can still participate in court proceedings.

The expert witness can be updated with the progress of the case wherever he is via PMS; time difference is no longer a problem. The moment he logs on to the PMS, he can view the latest documents and information about the case. Active interaction about the case progress with the lawyers in Hong Kong can be continued without interruption.

Technology Court

Apart from PMS, the Judiciary has also played a major role in modernising the traditional courtroom, bringing in the latest technologies and enhancing the efficiency of the court. Having planned and spent some HK$9 million since the millennium, the Hong Kong Judiciary have recently launched the use of its "Technology Court". With such technologies, trials can proceed even when key witnesses are not available in Hong Kong. Examination of such unavailable witness can be conducted via the Technology Court's closed-circuit television, hence, even if a witness is unavailable in Hong Kong or needs to be quarantine for suspected SARS infection, the trial can proceed without that witness being physically present in court.

Yet, there is still room for improvement for the Technology Court. Much of today's legal proceeding still operates on a paper basis, the parties will have to convert all such documents filed in the court registry into electronic format and store them onto a disk to be submitted to the Judiciary for uploading onto the Documentation and Exhibit Handling System (DEHS) provided by the Technology Court. This in effect creates extra work, hence additional costs to the parties.

These additional work and costs can be avoided if all court documents can be filed by electronic means at the very first instance. In fact, electronic filing has already been implemented in places like the United States, Singapore and Australia. It is likely that the Hong Kong legal industry will soon follow the trend of other industries, at such time, users of the PMS would certainly be at an advantage for they will be able to provide more efficient service and achieve higher customer satisfaction. These law firms will be able to commence proceedings as per their client's instruction anywhere, anytime.