Previous Document

4.6. Defence access to litigation support facilities


DPPs and large firms of solicitors have no sufficient economies of scale to
justify the effective development of their own litigation support facilities,
and most have done so or are in the process of doing so. They are unlikely to
need or desire access to litigation support facilities other than their own,
because they will have invested substantially in such facilities, and in
training their staff to use their own facilities.

However, considerable problems of potential injustice may arise in trials
where the DPP (and probably the Court) is making use of litigation support,
but one or more defendants are represented by small practices which does not
have access to equivalent facilities. It is probably not a sensible
expenditure of legal aid funds to develop large scale litigation support
facilities from scratch for the purposes of a single defence (and even less so
to duplicate such facilities), nor is it likely to be very effective. Two
suggestions have been made to reduce this problem: provision of litigation
support facilities by Crown law departments, or by legal aid agencies. The NCA
Conference resolved (NCA Resolutions (1992)) that the full benefits of the use
of information technology in trials, including cost savings, could only be
obtained if 'all parties have proper access to technological support systems
used in the trial process', and that this may require the provision of
specific funding to legal aid agencies. The decision in Dietrich's Case
concerning availability of legal aid in serious cases increases the need for
this question of equity to be addressed.

Legal Aid facilities on a bureau basis


The South Australian Legal Services Commission has also taken a novel approach
in one legally-aided complex criminal trial where one of the legally-aided
Defendants chose to be represented by a private solicitor, whereas the others
were represented by the Commission. The matter involved over 10,000 documents
and many thousands of pages of transcript. As the private solicitor did not
have litigation support facilities, he was allowed access to the extensive
litigation support facilities developed by the Commission in the matter, which
it would have been impossible for him to duplicate because of the cost and
expertise required. Access was only available at the Commission's premises in
this case.

In South Australia, approximately 60% of all legally-aided criminal
work is done by the private profession, the bulk of this being
done by small specialist firms. In complex criminal

                                                            Next Document