back to article UK.gov: New London courthouse will focus on crimes of a cyber nature

London is to get a new court building, billed as a legal centre for tackling cyber and online economic crimes. The courthouse, to be built on the site of Fleetbank House, just off the capital's Fleet Street, will have 18 courtrooms and house the Business and Property Court list of the High Court's Chancery Division. In …

  1. Peter Sommer

    Will they fund the specialist lawyers and digital forensics experts?

    There is little point in having a wonderful new building if there is no new funding for the specialist lawyers and digital forensics experts. Legal aid is in a crisis as lawyers and experts withdraw from publicly-funded work because the pay is a fraction of what can easily be earnt in private, civil, work. That means the new court will mostly host trials of very rich defendants.

    1. streaky

      Re: Will they fund the specialist lawyers and digital forensics experts?

      I don't see why it makes a difference to the courts process. You need that kind of thing in the police and CPS.

    2. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: Will they fund the specialist lawyers and digital forensics experts?

      Legal aid has always been a pittance.

      Lawyers literally only work via legal aid out of the goodness of their hearts, or because their firm instructs them to, not for the pay.

      The bigger difference has always been prosecution versus defence. Work on defending people who don't want to go to jail and you'll earn 10 times more than the people hired to gather the evidence to send you there.

      Plus, courts are entirely separate to lawyers, forensics and everything else. The court is merely the venue when you show those items to people trained in law. They specifically AREN'T trained in every minor detail, that's for the lawyers to get across to the 12 lay-men in the jury and the judge who might not have a clue anywhere. Only incredibly specialist cases will dare mess with that.

      If anything, you DO NOT WANT all that stuff in a court. You want an expert coming in, testifying, and being rebutted by other experts. You don't want judge and jury thinking they know more than the guy on trial, or the experts he's hired, or the counsel hired to represent him. Because, more often than not, they don't.

      Take it from me, someone who works in IT, graduated in mathematics, was married to a barrister, and lived with a geneticist. In all those areas of specialism, I assure you I can point out huge gaping flaws in other people's expectations of what "hacking", "probability", "legal precedent", or "DNA match" actually means in real life. You want normal people listening to an expert who says "No, that's not how it works, your honour. There's only 96% certainty that this is the same DNA, which means that almost everyone in this room could be convicted of the crime being described today".

      1. Peter Sommer

        Re: Will they fund the specialist lawyers and digital forensics experts?

        "Work on defending people who don't want to go to jail and you'll earn 10 times more than the people hired to gather the evidence to send you there.". Not if they are being paid at legal aid rates; increasingly solicitors are finding it difficult to get experts to work at such rates unless the case is exceptionally interesting.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    economic crime

    That's a good one that, how many people have been held to task over the recent recessions which also had tax payers bailing out banks at a loss? Do they ever arrest anyone in general? You know like people that siphon off the pensions and sell the company for it to go bump later down the line. It must be the easiest job in the police, get notified of crime, phone home office for decision on what to do, close case.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: economic crime

      You know like people that siphon off the pensions and sell the company for it to go bump later down the line.

      Like most venture capitalists then? If the result is not a company about to go bust then the amount of debt left behind is only going to delay the inevitable by a short while.

      1. hplasm
        Meh

        Re: economic crime

        "Like most venture capitalists then?"

        No, most of them should be fed to carnivorous elk.

  3. m0rt

    'Catherine McGuinness, policy chairman of the Corporation of London, chipped in to add: "I'm particularly pleased that this court will have a focus on the legal issues of the future, such as fraud, economic crime, and cyber-crime."'

    So they aren't legal issues in this current timeframe, then?

    Who knew..

    Where on earth to they get these stupid, idiotic, canned media quoting, crap spewing shitty little bollocky, electron wasting, bile inducing fools?

    1. Intractable Potsherd

      Don't hold back - tell us what you really think :-)

  4. DJV Silver badge

    So...

    What's the betting they will construct a fancy big hi-tech state-of-the-art building that will only hit the news in a major way when it's discovered that the electronic access doors can be regularly opened by kiddies using nothing more than a toothpick and a mobile phone with bluetooth...

    1. hplasm
      Mushroom

      Re: So...

      Moar London-centric shite... so worth the millions.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The current Fleetbank House is an utterly uninspiring Brutalist box, erected before the post-war architectural vandalism movement had discovered angles other than 90 degrees"

    It's so of-its-time, even the lettering above the door is in Microgramma.

    You practically expect that guy from "UFO" to park his futuristic-looking car in front of the futuristic-looking building before going inside and having futuristic meetings with his colleagues while women with futuristic-looking purple hair do things on futuristic-looking computers wearing futuristic-looking miniskirts or whatever. (And there is probably no #metoo in that future either).

    Disclaimer: Applies to values of "futuristic" circa 1965-73 only.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nice catch on the font. As far as brutalist buildings go, it's a fugly one and has nothing on the Welbeck Street car park.

  6. PNGuinn
    Pint

    Ministry of silly walks

    I was a bit flummoxed at first when I followed that linkey, finding myself in Salisbury square looking in the opposite direction, at a rather nice well proportioned edifice, which from the sight of the passers by was the home of the Ministry of Silly Walks.

    Have one of these - it's Friday tomorrow. >>

  7. hairydog

    Difficult to think of a more stupid place to build it. Whose pockets does it line?

  8. JaitcH
    Thumb Up

    Even The Older Courts Were Better Equipped Than Other Countries

    In the 1990's the McBarf McLibel Defamation trial pitted the goliath McBarf against Helen Steel and Dave Morris who made suggestions that McDonalds objected to,

    I attended a couple of those hearings - cheapest place to escape the rain - whilst visiting London and was surprised to find that the Court Reporters transcription was made available in real time to members of the public. (On the second visit I actually hooked into the serial cable that daisy-chained these public laptops together)

    I was amazed that such a service was available, the only other country I knew of was New Zealand where a series of Court Reporters would make transcripts for an hour or so then disappear to produce hard copy printouts of their work.

    In Ontario Landlord and Tenant hearings are recorded. If such recordings are not available for appeals, another trail is often ordered. A neerdowell acquaintance of mine made a high-energy, high audio tone generator which he used to jam these court recordings when his, or friends, cases were being heard.

    Ain't technology wonderful.

  9. FlamingDeath Silver badge

    Cyber evidence

    I find it really difficult to understand how anyone can be convicted of a computer crime, when you consider the sad state of affairs that is IT security and shonky software development

    Beyond all reasonable doubt?

    Yeah good luck with that maxim in the murky world of cyber

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