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Martin Bartfeld AM KC wins ALTA Award for work with eBrief Ready

We were delighted to see Martin Bartfeld AM KC of Holmes List win an ALTA Award in the ‘Raising the Bar’ category – having demonstrated the ‘best example of collaboration between a barrister, mediator, arbitrator, chambers/list or Court and technology provider to implement a solution in Australia’.

Martin, who practises in Family Law and Domestic Relationships matters in the Family Law Courts and the Supreme Courts, was instrumental in supporting Holmes List and the Victorian Bar as a whole in adopting electronic briefing during the pandemic.

As an early member of eBrief Ready’s steering committee, he worked closely with Founder Stephen Foley to develop the platform, which provides a better, more efficient and secure method for briefing a barrister, while also helping to introduce it to the Australian market. Generally speaking, barristers do not have IT staff and so it is important they have easy and consistent access to a delivery method like they had with hard copy briefs.

The eBrief Ready software addresses a number of important issues present in the legal industry – all of which were magnified by the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • How to work effectively and securely from home
  • How to move trials online to reduce overcrowding and improve access to justice
  • How to reduce the levels of waste in the process (time and environment) and improve productivity
  • How to improve collaboration between all parties involved in a matter
  • How to run a paperless trial (no more trolleys full of folders)

The platform is significantly more secure than old methods (email, couriers), accessible from anywhere at any time, and supports productivity and collaboration along every step along the judicial path.

Stephen and Martin ran a number of presentations together to Holmes List and the Victorian Bar, showcasing the platform’s features and highlighting its benefits for barristers. Martin has also been responsible for some of the most significant advances in the technology, allowing barristers to actually use the platform for not only preparing a trial, but also running it paperless. For example, the ability to synchronise annotations on documents with the court book so that page numbers line up when referring to them in court, as well as dual page numbering on documents so the court can be referred to the correct page in a particular bundle were both significant improvements to the product which Martin requested.

Receiving this level of first hand knowledge from a barrister with Martin’s stature has been invaluable shaping the platform for the benefit of its users.

Below is a video where Martin discusses the collaboration process with eBrief Ready, as well as the key outcomes from his perspective of working closely together.

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