Trial scheduling and coordination for BC’s Supreme Court

The Supreme Court in British Columbia consists of over 100 judges and presides in 29 locations throughout the province. For the majority of the court’s history, the scheduling of cases and hearings for each of the 29 locations was managed independently, via a manual system of Word documents, paper diaries, and an older DOS-based system in the high volume locations of Vancouver and New Westminster. The goal of the Supreme Court Scheduling System (SCSS) was to move to an integrated scheduling method and system, shared by all locations for scheduling hearings and assigning Judges and courtrooms.

OpenRoad worked closely with trial coordinators and Supreme Court staff users to identify their needs and create a system that closely matched the existing workflow of the Supreme Court. Close attention was paid to creating visual representations of the underlying data, to provide at-a-glance views of the current hearing workload, as well as intelligent searching mechanisms to suggest the best possible dates for new hearings. The resulting Microsoft .NET-based web application represented a revolutionary change in how scheduling took place in the Courts, not only in BC but throughout courts across Canada.

Trial Co-ordinators now have instant access to information about all hearings currently in progress within B.C. Judges and their assistants can quickly see the cases to which they are assigned. SCSS has greatly improved the way in which cases are scheduled and managed within the province and demonstrated significant cost savings.