About
LexTribunalis is built by Richard Verver, JCL, a canon lawyer in Toronto.
He has worked in a tribunal since 2015. He holds the licentiate in canon law from Saint Paul University in Ottawa, teaches canon law at Saint Philip's Seminary in Toronto, and is treasurer of the Canadian Canon Law Society.
The steps of each process and the time limits attached to them are kept as plain lists, each with its canon beside it, so that a canonist can check them and have them corrected.
LexTribunalis is his own undertaking. It is not a company: he is its only developer, and he gives the support himself.
How an installation works
- A demonstration by video call, and a conversation about how your tribunal works now.
- A written quotation.
- Installation on the diocese's server, with its IT staff where there are any. A diocese that would rather not run a server itself can have one arranged for it, and where that server would be is agreed beforehand.
- Fitting: protocol numbers, letterhead, templates, the days the tribunal is closed, calendars, and the accounts and roles of the staff.
- Training for the people who will use it.
Early access
LexTribunalis is not yet offered as a finished product. It works, and one diocesan tribunal in Ontario is using it, but it is still being shaped by what that tribunal finds in daily use.
A tribunal that joins now is an early user. It pays less than the system will later cost, and in return it puts up with rough edges and says what does not work. What early users ask for decides much of what is built next.
The first tribunal is not the one Richard works in. Its director is showing the system to colleagues herself.
How it is paid for
One payment buys a licence to use the system without limit of time. There is no yearly fee to keep it running.
Later updates can be bought as they come. A tribunal that does not buy one keeps what it has. Security fixes are not charged for, for as long as he maintains the system.
When the procedural law changes, a tribunal is not obliged to buy the update. The steps and time limits are written out in the source it holds, and it can make the change itself, have someone make it, or buy Richard's version.
The price for early users is agreed with each tribunal and quoted in writing.
If a tribunal stops, or its maker does
If Richard is ill or away, nothing stops working. The system runs on the diocese's server and depends on nothing of his, and it comes with a written guide to restarting, backing up and restoring it without him.
Installed on the diocese's server, the records are in the diocese's keeping and in formats that can be read without their maker: an ordinary database file, Word files, and the original documents under a key the diocese holds.
The tribunal also holds the source code and the right to go on using and changing it, so the system can be kept up by someone else. Yours to change says more.
A single export of everything a tribunal has entered, for taking to another system, is planned and not yet built. The page for IT departments gives the details, including what has not been done or settled yet.
Ask for a demonstration
Write to richard@lextribunalis.com, or use the form.