Mr Foley’s first introduction into a legal environment was working for his father delivering trolleys of briefs – and now TaLaw has over 15,000 users, which he attributes, in part, to COVID-19.

“In Victoria, I think it’s been the longest locked-up state in the world, so we’ve had to adapt. I think in that adaptation, people have had to move online. I don’t think we’re going back to the way we were,” he said.

“Barristers probably didn’t want to, in many cases, make the change to technology, but because of the situation they had to, and I had some barristers say they thought they might have to leave the bar. And I think that’s been one of the most rewarding parts of this process, is to see barristers who were really reluctant for a whole lot of reasons to take on technology, taking it on, learning a couple of new mouse clicks, and that’s often all it was.”

Similarly, when Ms Keily first started as a barrister in 2013, it felt like “stepping back in time” technology-wise, with briefs in strictly paper format being shredded at the end of a matter – a far cry from the online courts of today, post-pandemic.

“We’ve gone from beautiful bricks and mortar old buildings that were very tied to a location in a state or in a city or in a town or a region, to a completely cloud-based system which bears no resemblance, or has no relevance really to a physical location other than its judges or its registrars happen to be from there,” she said.

“What we’re finding is that it’s opening up not only nationally, but potentially internationally this fluidity amongst not only the practitioners, but also the bench who can listen to cases, and I’ve heard some of the law firm partners talk about how their practices have suddenly really become national in litigation, and they’re briefing barristers interstate that they would never have before. I think the online court of the future in that respect will probably just be much more enmeshed.

“It will probably become more and more similar across the board, as people end up unifying and unifying as they move towards a technological answer.”

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More and more judges and barristers are moving towards the idea of remote working, on occasion, added Mr Foley.

“That flexibility I think’s really important now in our lives. I think COVID’s taught us we need to be flexible; we’ve made the shift, we’ve made the change and staff are now looking at least having a hybrid way of working where they work from home sometimes and they work from work,” he said.

“That necessitates having a platform that allows you to share information and share it well, and so I think, as I keep saying, I think we’re not going backwards. We’re moving forwards now, and I think, in many ways, Victoria’s well placed. Because we’ve had to go through such a difficult time in lockdown, we’ve had to adapt to technology better than any place in the world potentially.”

And rather than being in tune with all the latest tech, Mr Foley said that tech providers need to make it simple enough for anyone to use.

“That’s our challenge, to keep the interface simple, intuitive, and that’s a lot harder sometimes than you think because everybody wants everything in the product. If you put too many things in the product, then potentially it becomes too unwieldy to use,” he said.

“We try to build products that fulfil most of the requirements and keep it simple, rather than fulfilling everything anybody could ever think of, and it’s just too hard for anybody to use. I think we’ve been successful in that.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Laura Kiely and Stephen Foley, click below: