In late July, The Honorable Geoffrey B. Morawetz, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Justice, announced the Ministry of Attorney General’s procurement of Thomson Reuters CaseLines – a cloud-based, evidence and court document management platform. Although Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice in Toronto started implementing Caselines as a pilot project at the beginning of August 2020, the MAG anticipates all Ontario Courts will use the e-storage and sharing system by the end of the year.

Caselines is a secure cloud platform that allows legal professionals to upload, store, review, search, mark-up, share and present court documents, and is intended as a supplement to e-conferencing software such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, etc. A file stored within CaseLines is sent as a link to the opposing party or judge then opened separately as a second screen to the e-conferencing platform.

Caselines supports documents in multiple formats: doc’s, pdf’s, audio, video and email formats.

A recent Notice to the Profession stated, Court documents will continue to be filed with the Court office according to the applicable rules of procedure and local practice directions. However, parties are  now required to upload court documents to CaseLines for review by the judge.

Note: CaseLines is not yet integrated with the Justice Services Online portal, and should not be confused with the Ministry’s Justice Services Online Portal. Documents uploaded must have been previously filed with the court, either in-person or through the Civil Claims Online Portal/Civil Submissions Online Portal.

Benefits In Using Caselines

• Caselines automatically paginate and index pdfs according to files names. However, individual index entries can be modified and re-arranged precisely as you would in arranging a physical Application Binder/folder.
• You can also create a sub-bundle/folder which contains a reduced set of documents, taken from the main ‘Master Bundle’/folder, and share the sub-bundle with the applicable viewers.
• There is no software to install: users only need to create an online account.
• There is no size limit on the documents you upload.

There are multiple different ways to conduct a cloud-based document management system. Caselines is just one way, and it is not a perfect end-to-end e-filing solution either. But it shows Ontario Courts can learn to pivot. And that is a very welcoming start.

If you have any questions regarding this blog or need legal assistance in a civil matter, please call 647 628 2746 or visit www.bozailaw.com a full-service firm that serves clients across the GTA and Ontario.

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