E-Trial Consulting

Kate Gower is the lawyer responsible for Victoria B.C.’s first Electronic Trial (E-Trial). Her goal is to use the story of this successful e-trial to introduce legal professionals to e-trials in a way that they can understand, so that everyone will be litigating on e-trial platforms by 2025.

Kate’s skill set is unique. She has become a leader in the field of Canadian E-trials.  Every time she hears about an E-Trial somewhere in Canada, she shares it on her website on the Modern Law Blog. She gathers and posts useful reference documents on a page of E-Trial Resources.  Since the successful E-Trial of West Moberly v. B.C., she has been directly involved in the following E-Trials:

  • As legal counsel and bringing the West Moberly E-Trial Platform back into court to argue costs before the Honourable Mr. Justice Johnston in 2018. 
  • As E-Trial Consultant to set up the trust administration case Hutchison v. Moore to run on CaseLines in early 2019 before the Honourable Mr. Justice Dley  This case is set to go before the Court of Appeal in fall 2020, still using CaseLines. 
  • As legal counsel for The Nuchatlaht v. BC, responsible for the E-Trial (an E-Application in this case), when the Plaintiffs argued their portion of 9 days of applications on CaseLines before the Honourable Mr. Justice Myers in fall 2019. 
  • As an E-Trial Expert, contracted to all seven parties, for the Aboriginal title actionCowichan Tribes v. BC before the Honourable Madam Justice Young. The case is running on REDI. Trial began in September 2019 and is ongoing.

As a game-changer in Aboriginal Litigation and an award-winning journalist with a deep background in science, she relishes this self-set task. She leads the field, writing papers, tracking e-trial trends in Canada and regularly speaking as a E-Trial consultant with expertise in the Federal and Provincial courts. She’s presented at Continuing Legal Education-TV, Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia (TLABC), the Canadian Bar Association, the Pacific Business Law Institute (PBLI), the Annual Pacific Legal Technology Conference and Webinars  the TLABC’s Women Lawyers Retreat, and the Federal Court  – Aboriginal Law Bar Liaison Committee. She will speak at the PBLI’s annual Developments in Aboriginal and Indigenous Law conference in 2020.

It helps that she loves practising law. In the last few years, Kate and her legal teams have changed the law in Canada on how the Metis are identified and consulted by the Crown, and have given one of Canada’s numbered treaties a new Western Boundary.

She built the e-trial platform for the Western Boundary E-Trial without using any proprietary litigation software. With her background in science and law, she enjoys clarifying the details that make the platform sing, and but still keep it easy to use. She creates processes that mirror what legal professionals expect. She constantly monitors and works at interface between what the technology can do, what the lawyers want to litigate, and what the court processes require. In her presentations, she likes to show legal professionals the platform in action, and then to show them that interface so that everyone can exchange ideas, information, concerns and solutions.

“Kate Gower had a great energy, and her enthusiasm for the topic really showed. I wish all the courtrooms had her system installed already!”

Attendee, Litigation Update 2016: Current Trends in Trial Tactics and Advocacy seminar

Kate Gower filmed and produced this 3 minute video on the West Moberly E-Trial Platform while contracting with Devlin Gailus Westaway Law

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