A Seamless Six-Month Criminal Retrial with Delium
For a six-month criminal retrial, court administration took full control of evidence management in Delium, ensuring seamless, efficient proceedings without external support.
The Challenge
A high-profile criminal case, involving an Inquest, Trial, Appeal, and Inquiry spanning from 1995 to 2012, was set for Retrial in 2018. The evidence was diverse, including audio, video, photographs, and thousands of pages of transcripts from prior proceedings.
Legal teams and court administration had been managing evidence in Delium since the 2012 Appeal and were determined to run the retrial without external specialist support. To prepare, court staff received training on new Delium features, including direct instruction for the Judge. Additionally, a Delium affiliate worked with Court Administration to optimise the courtroom setup.
Both prosecution and defence teams had access to private Delium cases for pre-trial preparation and received a single training session in the months leading up to the trial.
Delium Strategy
During the trial, both parties extensively used Delium’s Publish List functionality to organise and call up evidence. Each adopted a different methodology for structuring their evidence:
One team created bundles by issue, with subfolders for each relevant witness:
- Issue 1
Witness 1
Witness 2
Witness 3
The other team structured their bundles by hearing day, with subfolders for each witness:
- Day 1
Witness 1
Witness 2
Witness 3
Delium’s flexibility allowed both approaches to function seamlessly. The Court-appointed operator accessed each party’s Publish Lists and could display evidence in one click as Counsel referred to it.
Ultimately, the six-month trial ran smoothly without any need for external support or additional training.
The Benefits
- Fully self-managed – Legal teams and court staff ran the entire trial independently using Delium, eliminating the need for external operators.
- Seamless evidence presentation – Publish Lists enabled quick, structured access to evidence, reducing delays.
- Customisable workflows – Delium supported different methodologies for organising evidence, allowing each party to work in their preferred manner.
- Reliable and efficient – The trial ran without technical disruptions, reinforcing Delium’s stability in high-profile cases.
Reflections from Participants
- “Delium has been bulletproof; it has evolved in interesting and useful ways since I first started using it.”
- “One word – Faultless!”
- “Everything has gone incredibly smoothly from a technical perspective, and the parties are totally on board with preparing examination lists in advance, making the presentation process much more manageable.”
- “Counsel are starting to see how efficient things can be when they prepare their publish lists in advance and can be confident the required document will be available when they need it.”
What the Legal Community Says About Delium
We were presented with 10 folders, the whole case, a little later we were looking at millions – with Delium this wasn’t a problem.
eHearing Participant
We needed a litigation support environment that would capitalise on our specialist capabilities and perform under very taxing circumstances. Delium delivered what we needed!
eHearing Participant
Using Delium significantly reduced our clients cost of running the proceedings because most of the time we could work from offices in our home cities rather than travelling to work together.
eHearing Participant
Delium was comfortably used by all concerned.
eHea
The hyperlinking in transcript was very effective, and the side-by-side view made nightly review very easy.
eHearing Participant
Delium’s Publish to User functionality meant we could share documents with our team, opposing Counsel, and the Court, without exposing them to the witness.
eHearing Participant
The ability for legal practitioners to control document publication made the process seamless.
Presiding Judge
Delium has been bulletproof; it has evolved in interesting and useful ways since I first started using it.
eHearing Participant
Everything has gone incredibly smoothly from a technical perspective, and the parties are totally on board with preparing examination lists in advance, making the presentation process much more manageable.
eHearing Participant
Counsel are starting to see how efficient things can be when they prepare their publish lists in advance and can be confident the required document will be available when they need it.
eHearing Participant
Delium was a pleasure to use. I found that I was doing my own searches and retrieving information without delay, difficulty, or interruption to the conduct of the trial. On some occasions, I even began to feel frustrated when Counsel, relying on hard copy documents, were causing minor delays.
Justice David Bleby South Australian Supreme Court
Delium provides new horizons, not only of efficiency but of availability and quality of information.
eHearing Participant
The speed of access to obscure passages by simple and efficient search processes saved enormous time in retrieval. The text was presented in a form that was easy to read, as indeed were the documents and the data relating to them.
eHearing Participant
The ability to be "on the same, but personalised, page" at all times and for all involved is a GAME CHANGER.
eHearing Participant
This is the first time in my history of working on cases that I can walk into a courtroom with just my laptop.
eHearing Participant
The ability to upload our examination outlines into a private space and hyperlink to the evidence we wanted to present in a matter of minutes was wonderful. Delium made me feel in full control of the examination process.
eHearing Participant
The availability of such a comprehensive record after hearings was invaluable in the creation of my arbitral determination.
Professor John SharkeyArbitrator
Delium's hyperlinking tool is amazing - it saved me hours of work.
eHearing Participant