> policy.load("digital-justice")
Electronic files, online claims, shared infrastructure — and the safeguards that must travel with them.
§ 14 — Policy
Since 1 January 2026, courts and prosecution services are in principle required to keep files electronically. A time-limited opt-out, adopted by the cabinet in September 2025, allows paper files until 1 January 2027. Judges’ and lawyers’ associations criticised the postponement as a sign that the justice system had been slow to adapt; Hamburg, among others, met the original deadline.
In force, with opt-out to 2027A law promulgated in December 2025 created a pilot online procedure. Since 1 April 2026, 18 local courts in 10 Länder handle money claims up to €10,000 and air-passenger-rights claims digitally, via a federal justice service portal.
Pilot runningInstead of sixteen separate systems, Bund and Länder are building a joint justice cloud. A first working version is planned for early 2027; Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony were the first to connect to the national justice network in August 2026. The Pact for the Rule of Law earmarks €210 million for 2027–2029.
Under constructionIn June 2025 federal and state justice ministers issued a joint statement on artificial intelligence in the judiciary: AI may support, but cannot replace, human judicial decisions.
Preservation orders for traffic data, the proposed IP-address storage and a bill on digital investigative measures in criminal procedure extend investigators’ access to digital traces. The IP debate →
Digitalisation raises its own questions: data security in shared systems, judicial independence in IT controlled by executive authorities, accessibility for people without digital skills, and the right to a hearing before a human judge.
Digital justice is often discussed as an IT project. The more consequential questions are procedural: which steps can a court take online, how evidence is presented, whether hearings may be held by video, and how a citizen without a lawyer interacts with a digital procedure. The online procedure pilot tests exactly these questions in a controlled setting.
Legal technology also exists outside the courts: online services that help consumers claim compensation, for example for delayed flights, have changed how small claims are pursued. The pilot’s inclusion of passenger-rights claims reflects this reality.
At the June 2026 federal–state digital summit in Hamburg, Hubig reported on planning for the digital projects that will receive federal co-funding from 2027.