BarTalk April 2001
Volume 13, Number 2

An update on eFiling and Juricert

by Ron Usher

Three major government electronic filing initiatives have been under consideration and planning for several years now. The Land Title Office, Court Services, and the Corporate Registry have all been working on systems to allow lawyers to file documents and forms via the Internet.

The Corporate Registry has developed Corporate Online (COLIN) as part of the planning for the changes contemplated by the proposed new Company Act. The project is now on hold, awaiting legislative introduction and then approval for an amended new Company Act. Implementation of the on-line filing system would commence with the effective date of the new law, which would be 6 months after legislative approval. COLIN will allow for the filing of most Company Act forms and the payment of necessary fees.

Court Services Online (CSOL) is part of a larger “Electronic Justice Services Project” that includes case tracking, scheduling, and the CSOL e-filing component. The CSOL project is at the stage of negotiating with a contractor for the design and development of the e-filing system. If treasury board approval is obtained, it is expected that a pilot program will be started in the Spring of 2002 in the Vancouver law courts. This will involve 50 to 100 firms for a six-month period. A demonstration system is being built now that will be reviewed by court administrators and officials, as well as the CSOL client advisory group.

The Land Title Electronic Filing and Registration project (EFAR) has been underway since the spring of 1998. Specifications are expected to be finished this spring, at which time contracts will be obtained for the construction of the system. Considerable input from the bar was obtained from consultative committee members as well as surveys and focus groups held around the province. No specific implementation dates are available at this time, but it is hoped that the groundwork done since the beginning of the project will allow quick development of the final system.

None of the agencies involved contemplate mandatory usage, as was done for the Land Title system in Ontario. Their challenge is to create useful, practical, and cost effective systems that will be attractive enough to the lawyers to convince them to switch from current paper systems. Continued input from the profession to all of these initiatives will be critical to ensuring that they meet the needs of the working bar.

Juricert (www.juricert.com)
For more than 100 years an important aspect of the Law Society’s role has been to respond to requests from the public and government to validate the credentials of persons claiming to be lawyers. Those “trusted credentials” enable the public to have trust and confidence in the profession. With the emergence of many digital transaction and communication systems, it became important to create a means of responding to electronic requests for validation of a lawyer’s identity and status. In order to do this, the Law Society of BC, in cooperation and consultation with the other Law Societies, created Juricert Services Inc.

The purpose of Juricert is to provide a legal and technical platform for the creation of “Trusted Digital Credentials”. These digital records are the result of an identification and authentication process that verifies the identity and status of the lawyer. Once validated by the Law Society, these electronic records are used as the basis for secure computer and Internet applications.

More than 700 lawyers have now been certified by Juricert. The first commercial application to incorporate Juricert credentials is PrivateExpress, a secure e-courier service. For the balance of 2001, PrivateExress is available at no charge to any BC lawyer who has been through the Juricert registration process.

Ron Usher is a staff lawyer at the Law Society of British Columbia and the Vice President of Juricert. He can be reached at 604.605.5310 or at 1.800.903.5300 or on Internet at rusher@lsbc.org.

This article was published in the April 2001 issue of BarTalk and is subject to the copyright by the British Columbia Branch of the Canadian Bar Association, 2005, all rights reserved.