MANY lawyers particularly barristers will heartily agree with your editorial comment (South China Morning Post, March 29) that, ''It is a disgrace that in the last decade of the 20th century Hongkong courts still function by methods that belong to the quill pen era''.
To my personal knowledge, the profession (including the judiciary itself), has protested for 20 years or more against the system whereby High Court judges have to record evidence in civil cases in longhand.
A judge's function is to judge and not to be a scribe. To judge properly he must hear the evidence, evaluate it in his mind as it is given, assess the demeanor and credibility of the witness, etc.
It is extremely difficult for a judge to do this and at the same keep a longhand verbatim record of the evidence whilst allowing the case to proceed with reasonable dispatch.
Some judges keep a verbatim record but proceedings move at a snail's pace.
It is intensely frustrating attempting to cross-examine at slower than dictation speed.