Those responsible for administering justice systems in many parts of the world are increasingly turning toward digitization and technological solutions, often with the goal of improving the efficiency and accessibility of justice [1,2,3,4,5,6]. As in other areas in which information systems (IS) have been developed and implemented, there is growing recognition among those working on e-justice initiatives [7] that principles relating to both system design itself (“system design principles”) [8], as well as to designing and managing the process by which systems are created and implemented (“design management principles”), can affect outcomes [3,9]. Moreover, a specialized e-justice literature has focused attention on the impact of law and technology considerations that are uniquely important to both defining what it means to have a successful outcome and enhancing the prospect for making positive choices about the design and implementation of justice sector initiatives in particular [10,11,12,13,14,15].

In this paper, we examine several e-justice initiatives in the EU and Canada with the objectives of illustrating and elaborating upon system design and design management principles in a manner intended to assist an interdisciplinary legal audience to better understand how these principles may affect a system’s ability to improve access to justice. We draw our examples both from functioning national and transnational e-justice systems in the EU, as well as contrasting Canadian experiences with integrated case management systems.

Our examples assist in illustrating some of the impacts of the system design and design management principles from the existing IS and e-justice literature, but also highlight three areas that may be especially important in terms of facilitating access to justice through technological systems, the first of which has not previously been emphasized in the literature: (i) complexity, cost, decentralized systems and the unavailability of paper-based alternatives can lead to differential diffusion and impacts among citizens and therefore impede realization of the justice value of equality of access; (ii) nimble, anticipatory forms of adaptation of legal norms, such as issuance of jargon-free practice directions made available in multiple languages, may better facilitate equitable diffusion and adoption of e-justice initiatives, as well as opportunities for communication and collaboration between key justice sector stakeholders; and (iii) iterative design processes can foster ongoing involvement of and collaboration with key justice sector stakeholders (particularly judges) that can materially affect the design and implementation of e-justice initiatives.

Section 2 summarizes the system design and design management principles focused on in the existing IS and e-justice literature, and explains the basis upon which we selected the six examples explored in Section 3 and Section 4. Section 3 [16,17] examines these principles using three European e-justice system examples: the Italian Trial Online (TOL), the English and Welsh Money Claim Online (MCOL), and the European trans-border system e-Justice Communication via Online Data Exchange (e-CODEX). Section 4 examines the principles using the two very different experiences of Canadian provinces Ontario and British Columbia (BC) with implementing unified case management and publicly accessible e-court systems: Ontario’s Integrated Justice Project (IJP), Ontario’s Court Information Management System (CIMS) and BC’s eCourt. Section 5 summarizes our observations about the impacts of the system design and design management principles with respect to the six examples discussed, and also suggests the importance of taking into account whether system design and design management are carried out in ways that facilitate equitable access to justice for all citizens.