“RED TV”
Lawyer Nabil Maad considered that the crisis of slow trials in Lebanon cannot be reduced to a lack of resources or the number of judges, but is also linked to old judicial procedures, and accumulated crises that have afflicted the judicial body, in addition to the lack of strict adherence to legal deadlines, stressing that modernizing work mechanisms and moving to electronic services can shorten an essential part of the time that lawsuits take.
During an interview on the “3:15 Economy” program on RED TV, Maad explained that the main problem in Lebanon is also the absence of accurate numbers, pointing out that the World Bank estimated the time it takes for any case to reach a final decision to range between 5 and 10 years.
He pointed out that what can be confirmed in practice is that any lawsuit does not end before 3 or 4 years, and in some exceptional cases it may extend to 10 years.
On the other hand, Maad believed that “we should not be too unfair to ourselves in Lebanon,” explaining that the slowness of judicial transactions is not an exclusively Lebanese phenomenon, but also exists in a number of European countries, including France and England.
Regarding the reality of the judicial body, he stressed that the number of judges in Lebanon is small, but they perform their work despite limited resources and capabilities at various levels.
He stressed that the reasons for the delay are not limited to the limited financial resources in the Ministry of Justice, but also include the repercussions of the financial crisis, the Corona pandemic, and other circumstances that affected the work of the judiciary during the past years.
Maad pointed out that the financial crisis had a direct impact on the judicial body, after it led to the isolation of judges, in parallel with the isolation of judicial assistants, stressing that “until now, we have not yet emerged from the crisis that the judicial body is suffering from in Lebanon.”
Speaking about solutions, Maad believed that one of the most prominent problems that must be worked on is the outdatedness of the approved judicial procedures, and he said that Lebanon, for example, still relies on paper notification.
He explained that the law does not yet allow lawyers and clients to be notified via email, calling for moving to a system that allows claims to be submitted electronically and notifications to be made in the same way.
He also pointed out that the legal deadlines specified for a response may be exceeded depending on the judge and his discretion in managing the file, considering that there are short-term solutions that can be adopted immediately, the most important of which is adherence to the legal deadlines, which contributes to reducing the duration of lawsuits and accelerating their resolution.
Regarding the cost of resorting to the judiciary, Maad stressed that judicial fees in Lebanon are not low, but are considered relatively high and their value is not insignificant.
He explained that the judiciary is not a financially independent institution, as the judicial fees collected enter the state treasury, from which the necessary funds are allocated to the judiciary.
He pointed out that citizens sometimes hesitate to resort to the judiciary for several reasons, most notably the judicial fees that they must pay, the large number of documents required and the possibility of errors in the submitted papers, in addition to the long duration of the trials.
Thus, Maad puts the judiciary crisis before two parallel paths: addressing the financial and administrative conditions of the judicial body on the one hand, and modernizing procedures, adhering to legal deadlines, and adopting digitization on the other hand, in a way that reduces the time and cost that the citizen bears in order to access his rights before the judiciary.
