e-Justice in France: the e-Barreau experience

Recent field research projects in the justice sector have shown how the development of e-justice entails much more than developing, installing and connecting technological devices or providing normative recognition to the use of the digital medium instead of the traditional one for the exchange of documents. This article presents an exploratory case-study describing the development of an e-filing and document-exchange system between lawyers and ordinary courts in the French justice administration. As it soon became apparent, the real challenge did not lie in the search, assembly and manufacture of technological tools, but in the creation of the governance net of relevant organizational actors that was needed to successfully sustain and implement the innovation. It concerned looking for acceptable compromises as to what could be done and how. The challenge was also to find ways to motivate users to actively participate in the creation of the new service which could not work without them. Furthermore, external and somewhat unforeseeable events also played a relevant role in defining choices, the tempo and the possibilities for the success of the system's design and implementation.