Canadian Lawyer

30 www.canadianlawyermag.com Family lawyers tell Branislav Urosevic how they are using tech to make the process faster, cleaner, and more affordable Legal tech adds order to family-law chaos LEGAL TECHNOLOGY can help lawyers and clients by making legal processes cheaper, shorter, more convenient, and less stressful. According to lawyers and tech innovators, family law is one area where this transformation has been most apparent. Technology is reshaping how family law is practised in Canada, from gathering and presenting evidence to managing corre- spondence between former spouses and calculating spousal or child support. Evidence is easier to gather and present One of the most significant benefits of legal tech in family law is the ability to gather evidence more easily. Since much of the communication between former partners happens via text or phone, that correspon- dence is now easier to document, says Christine Ashbourne, a family lawyer at Torkin Manes LLP. She says technology facilitates evidence gathering, which can shorten or simplify the court process. Erin Chaiton-Murray, a partner at family law boutique Murray Lawson LLP, says tech- nology is benefiting family lawyers perhaps even more than those practising in other areas of law. Family law clients often rely on electronic communication with former spouses, making accessing records of their interactions easier. LEGAL REPORT FAMILY LAW "There are multiple apps you can use to essentially download all of the text commu- nication from a phone between your client and their former spouse. You can easily gather all of the texts in preparation for a trial or to use as evidence in their case," Chaiton-Murray says. Tali Green, CEO of legal tech plat- form Goodfact, which builds case chronol- ogies for litigators, says family law was one of her primary focus areas when developing tools to extract and organize documentation. She says that family law differs from other areas because it's documentation-heavy. She adds that family law consistently involves managing large volumes of material – emails, text messages, social media posts, financial records, medical documents, etc. "There needs to be some way for these lawyers to make sense of all that and put it all into some coherent order because family law is all about what happened, who's responsible for what, who said what," she says. Electronic trials save time and resources Martha McCarthy, founding partner of McCarthy Hansen & Company LLP, says technology has also revolutionized how evidence is presented in court. Despite some resistance to virtual trials, she believes the advantages are undeniable. "Nobody talks about how much quieter the courtroom is when there is no one shuf- fling paper or how much quicker the process is because you are not walking around the courtroom with three copies of each docu- ment that you're showing a witness," she says. McCarthy adds that electronic trials have made the practice more sustainable, "That's a big difference from how a lot of legal practice – certainly family law – used to be. Everything was very paper-heavy" Erin Chaiton-Murray, Murray Lawson LLP

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