Is it just a personal issue? This is the question that lingers as she stares at her screen in frustration. The court’s website has once again let her down. Despite her repeated efforts to refresh, reboot, and switch browsers, the webpage remains inaccessible. Meanwhile, a colleague across the room assures her, ‘It’s working fine for me.’ This scenario is all too familiar for many who frequently interact with court websites—be they litigators, litigants, journalists, or legal researchers. The inconsistency and unreliability are a persistent problem.
As one delves deeper into the judicial system’s hierarchy, the challenges become more pronounced. Court websites, which are essential for ensuring access to justice in the digital era, are plagued by a myriad of issues. Users often encounter poor functionality, cumbersome interfaces, missing orders, inaccurately displayed judge names, and complex captchas.
On August 15th, a significant stride was made towards alleviating these frustrations and enhancing access to justice. The CourtsDaily team, in partnership with Bar & Bench, unveiled the Court Downtime Tracker. This innovative tool offers a live, constantly updating tracker that monitors the status of court websites across various forums, displaying their uptime in real-time.
While uptime monitoring is a standard practice in the tech industry and among other web-based service sectors, the legal field has been slow to adopt such measures. Siddarth Raman, CTO of The Professeer, emphasized in a recent article the need for comprehensive reform in court website architecture. Maintaining a live and responsive online presence around the clock is a critical first step.
Shishira Rudrappa, the Founder of Bar & Bench, highlights the increasing importance of reliable court websites. With the anticipated integration of payment systems into these platforms—allowing legal professionals to conduct transactions directly—any downtime could significantly disrupt legal proceedings and impede access to justice for litigants.
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This collaborative initiative aims to expand its coverage rapidly, soon introducing alerts for outages on court and tribunal websites. Until then, users can benefit from an ‘Is It Down?’ service tailored to their preferred Indian court websites.
This project by The Professeer, in collaboration with Bar & Bench, marks a significant step forward in ensuring the reliability and accessibility of digital justice tools.
