Legal practitioners will soon be able to file cases before the Administrative Review Tribunal online, without having to set foot inside a court.

Justice Minister Owen Bonnici yesterday called on legal practitioners to use the service, first introduced in 2013 for the Small Claims Tribunal in a bid to make the judicial system more accessible.

He said the online service would be extended to the Administrative Review Tribunal from next month and the online system could later apply to all civil cases.

“Our ultimate aim is to have an online court registry so that people will not have to set foot in the court building to open and manage their own cases,” Dr Bonnici said.

An average 275 cases go before the Administrative Review Tribunal every year. At the tribunal, individuals or companies appeal against administrative decisions made by government entities.

People can appeal decisions about licences, permits, warrants, concessions, tax and VAT

“The strength of a government is measured by the power it hands citizens to appeal its decisions and, through this tribunal, people can appeal decisions about licences, permits, warrants, concessions, tax and VAT, among others,” he said. To date, to submit judicial applications one must go to the Administrative Review Tribunal in person.

Come October 1, practitioners can log in online and, through the case management system, upload a scanned image of the judicial application and pay the administrative fees. The process takes under five minutes.

The clearance rate of cases before the tribunal shot up to 149 per cent from 25 per cent in 2011, Dr Bonnici said. This meant that while, in 2011, one case was decided for every four filed, today the number of decided cases is higher than the total amount of new ones.