Canadian law is grounded in the thousands of decisions judges write each year. These decisions contain countless unstructured data points about the issues that drove litigants to court; how judges resolved those issues; and how the legal system treats the individuals under its control. Yet courts and governments rarely—if ever—compile and analyze this data, perhaps because of decisions’ inconsistent structure, length, and imprecision. For example, if decisions were designed to be more precise, shorter, and consistent, three things might happen:

(1)   Access to justice could improve. Litigation could become cheaper, faster, and more consistent. Judges could speedily and predictably resolve disputes and write clear, short, data-rich decisions. With more predictability, more individuals could avoid litigation, and the burden on resources could be alleviated.

(2)   Our legal data deficit could improve. Data in better structured decisions would appear in the same place and be easily amenable to data science. We could quickly gain fundamental insights about our legal system that we currently lack.

(3)   Parliamentarians and courts could deliberately design user-focused laws and processes. Parliamentarians could use data to design new user-focused laws and processes, and such laws and processes could become more inclusive, fair, and just. Similarly, courts and judges could use data to improve the judicial process; decision-making; and how we access justice.   

Such outcomes would promote the constitutional promise of intelligible, accessible, and predictable justice. Designing better judicial decisions and better decision-making could be a fundamental first step to creating a more just, proportionate, fair legal system. Many improvements are possible, and I am far from sure what would work. But I do know that many improvements should be explored.