WIRED LAWYERS
Ruth Fernandez-Yap reports

continued...

In a matter of seconds, an e-mail message is delivered. No postage, no data loss, not a minute wasted. Views and ideas go around the globe in a day.

Then there's the enormous storage capability of the Web. You can retrieve information saved in the database whenever and wherever you need it.

The best part of it all is the big help the Internet gives to research efforts. Tremendous information can be accessed on the Net at a click of a link or a button. Search engines produce terabytes of information that could take a researcher weeks to get if done manually.

Certainly there are areas that need to be addressed, foremost of which are security and authenticity problems. But with the Electronic Commerce Law properly in place, Atty. Disini assures that cyber crimes will be reduced.

"Under Section 33 of the E-Commerce Law, cyber crimes will be penalized, " Atty. Disini said. It will not automatically eradicate hacking or piracy, but at least, the framework is already present. It will be another continuing process that has to be modified according to present needs.

The question now is, will all these modern technology, the Web notwithstanding, address the slow justice system? In defense of the Philippine justice system, Atty. Uy said: "The justice system is not only composed of the courts. It is made up of five pillars. The Supreme Court is only one-fifth of the entire justice system."

He said that before a case reaches the courts, it has to go through the law enforcement and the justice departments, which are under the executive branch. The judiciary comes into the picture only when a decision is filed with the Supreme Court.

If you watched the impeachment trial closely, you might have seen how accurate and fast the court stenographer read her steno notes. Don't look now, but it was made possible by a computer software that the Supreme Court now uses, thanks to the efforts made by Atty. Ivan John Uy, who facilitated the acquisition of the software.

Talk about foresight, and Atty. Uy has it.

Armed with a law degree, Atty. Ivan John Uy stepped into the portals of the Supreme Court in 1989 with all the idealism and fire of youth. Even while studying, he believes that the computer can do so many things for his profession. It is this belief that pushed him to pursue the computerization of the Supreme Court. This has also brought him the many highs and lows of what would be a decade-long stint in the High Court.

Computerization was then seen as a big threat to every employee Ð the courts' employees were no exception. For a while, they had the notion that they would be stripped of their positions and eventually lose their jobs. As one of the primary defenders of the computer system, Atty.Uy was faced with angry protests and strong reactions. This, however, did not change his stand on the issue. He stood his ground and pursued his plans. His law education helped him through all the ordeals he dealt with people professionally and diplomatically.

"There were a lot of explaining to do," he said. "We just started out distributing PCs and then office applications. Employees were trained and retrained so they could adapt to the new system."

He may well be a man ahead of his time. Under his management, the court surpassed its targets and looked into the future with a sense of foresight and a lot of wisdom. Long before others thought about automating their systems, he was in the thick of computerizing the Supreme Court. Even with the limited 1% budget, Atty. Uy spearheaded his team into new heights.

His stint at the MISO has taken most of his time. One pet project after another has taken him away from private law practice, which is more profitable.

Ten years later, the Supreme Court adopted and implemented several computerized information systems. Its Management Information Systems Office (MISO) developed first the Case Administration System.

"It tracks cases within the Supreme Court," Atty. Uy said. "From the time the case is filed until the case is decided and released, the entire flow is monitored. Then we are able to come up with a status of the case."

The MISO also developed several other systems, among which was an application that automated the salary and allowance payroll systems of the employees of the Supreme Court and the lower courts. The automated payroll system has facilitated the early and accurate computation of basic pay and allowance, as well as retirement pays.

Other systems that are already in place are the Judicial and Bar Council Management, which monitors the status of nomination of an applicant for various positions. There are also programs for the Human Resources Division of the High Court, along with the Computer-Assisted Legal Research.

The courts figure prominently in the E-Commerce Law, which was passed on June 2000. So we should naturally expect the overhauling of the judicial system so it can accommodate the requirements set forth by this directive.

But Atty. Uy said that even before the e-commerce bill was passed into law, the Supreme Court already completed everything that the E-Commerce Law required it to do. "A year or two before the law, we already had a computerized legal research system and a Web site. What appeared to be more relevant to us in the e-Commerce Law was the mandate to amend the rules of court in order to deal with electronic documents, digital signatures and digital notarization," he explained.

The courts are now ready to go digital. But before this could be started, Atty. Uy wanted to make sure that the security system is in place, although he is confident that only a few souls will be interested to hack the justice portfolio. "Banks are more interesting," he said.

In June or July this year, MISO would again embark on a new project it will be distributing computers to all courts in the country. With this, it is expected that ordinary folks can now inquire on the status of their cases electronically.

On the lighter side, Atty. Uy said that if funds were available, the first application that he would provide the courts is the electronic filing system.

"It will save time, effort and money," he said. "If you can file your pleadings electronically, data integrity is assured and it can be acquired with optimum speed, postage-free. He would also install an "Information Kiosk," where people can check the status of their cases, or the court calendaring from either the telephone or from the lobbies of their any court or city hall.

"These are mainly public service that will lessen the cost or burden on the people."

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