Overview#
A detective inspector is three weeks from a scheduled District Court hearing when the prosecution solicitor requests the current state of the case: outstanding disclosure items, witness availability, and whether the key forensic evidence package is ready. Without a dedicated system, answering that question requires pulling information from emails, spreadsheets, and shared drives. The Court Hearings module makes it a single query. Every hearing is tracked from its initial listing through adjournments, case conferences, and final disposition, with all associated case material, personnel assignments, and deadlines linked in one place.
The module is designed for investigative organisations that are simultaneously managing hearings across multiple courts, jurisdictions, and subject matters. It provides structured scheduling, outcome recording, and pre-hearing task management, ensuring that investigative teams, legal advisers, and oversight bodies share a consistent, up-to-date picture of where each matter stands at any point in the prosecution lifecycle.
Key Features#
- Hearing Lifecycle Management: Track each hearing from initial listing through every adjournment and case conference to final disposition, with structured outcome recording at each stage.
- Pre-Hearing Task Checklists: Configurable preparation checklists covering evidence readiness, disclosure obligations, witness notification, and legal submission deadlines, with completion tracked against assigned personnel.
- Multi-Court and Multi-Jurisdiction Support: Manage hearings across District, Circuit, Central Criminal, and Special Criminal courts, as well as equivalent courts in other jurisdictions, within a single unified view.
- Disclosure Management: Track prosecution disclosure obligations, log items disclosed, and record defence receipt confirmations to demonstrate compliance with fair-trial requirements.
- Witness and Personnel Scheduling: Record witness availability and attendance requirements for each hearing, and assign investigating officers to appear or provide statements, with calendar integration to flag scheduling conflicts.
- Document and Submission Linking: Attach prosecution files, expert reports, custody records, and court submissions directly to the hearing record so legal teams access current, version-controlled material without searching separately.
- Outcome and Disposal Recording: Capture structured disposal outcomes including remand on bail, remand in custody, conviction, acquittal, nolle prosequi, and sentence details, feeding downstream case closure and statistics workflows.
- Audit Trail: Every change to a hearing record, including date amendments, outcome updates, and document additions, is logged with actor identity and timestamp to support oversight and accountability.
Use Cases#
- Tracking a complex, multi-accused fraud prosecution through months of preliminary hearings, trial scheduling, and sentence review across multiple court levels.
- Managing disclosure compliance in a serious crime case where the prosecution team must demonstrate that all material has been provided to the defence within court-mandated timescales.
- Coordinating witness and officer attendance for a hearing in a jurisdiction outside the investigating agency's home base, with travel and scheduling conflicts surfaced automatically.
- Generating a current-status briefing for a senior officer or oversight body showing all active court matters, their next hearing dates, outstanding preparation tasks, and recent disposals.
- Supporting post-disposal case closure by confirming that all hearing outcomes are recorded and any appeal windows or sentence review dates are registered before a case is archived.
Integration#
The Court Hearings module integrates with the platform's case management, evidence, timeline, and workforce modules. Hearing records are linked directly to the parent investigation so that investigators view prosecution progress alongside active enquiry work. Evidence packages prepared for court are pulled from the evidence management module with chain-of-custody metadata intact. Workforce scheduling draws on officer availability data to surface conflicts before they become operational problems. The module exposes a structured API enabling integration with external prosecution case management systems, national court listing services, and disclosure management platforms used by partner agencies and legal teams.
Open Standards#
- iCalendar (RFC 5545): Hearing dates, pre-hearing deadlines, and witness attendance requirements are exportable as RFC 5545 iCalendar events, enabling synchronisation with calendar applications used by investigators and legal teams.
- ISO 8601 / RFC 3339 (UTC timestamps): All hearing dates, outcome timestamps, and deadline records are stored as timezone-aware UTC datetimes in ISO 8601 format, ensuring unambiguous chronological ordering across multi-jurisdiction cases.
- ISO 19005-3 (PDF/A-3): Court submissions, custody records, and case disclosure packages exported from the module are produced in PDF/A-3 archival format, satisfying long-term preservation and admissibility requirements for Irish court proceedings and equivalent jurisdictions.
- OASIS LegalXML (OASIS LegalDocML / Akoma Ntoso): Structured court documents and outcome records can be serialised in Akoma Ntoso XML, supporting interoperability with national e-Justice systems and court information platforms that consume this open legal document standard.
- OAuth 2.0 / JWT (RFC 6749 / RFC 7519): Access to hearing records, disclosure packages, and sensitive case documents is governed by JWT bearer tokens issued under the platform's OAuth 2.0 authorisation server, scoping permissions by role and case assignment.
- GraphQL (June 2018 specification): Hearing queries, outcome mutations, task status updates, and document linkage operations are exposed through a typed GraphQL API, enabling structured integration with prosecution case management systems and external legal platforms.
- UUID (RFC 4122): Every hearing record, task, outcome entry, and disclosure item is assigned a version-4 UUID as its primary identifier, ensuring collision-free references when exchanging records with partner agencies and court systems.
Availability#
- Enterprise Plan: Included
- Professional Plan: Available as an add-on; contact your account manager for licensing details.
Last Reviewed: 2026-05-26