The Twelfth Jury Research and Practice Conference takes place on Friday 17th November at The Sydney Mint. This annual event brings together jury managers, legal practitioners, architects and academics to present, discuss and debate topical jury research and practice.

The 5-day executive court tour travels from San Francisco to Los Angeles including Silicon Valley and the headquarters of Cisco and Facebook. It will focus on several key technological challenges facing courts - going paperless, cyber security, immersive video-conferencing, social media, remote interpreting, online dispute resolution and artificial intelligence.

The fifth tour in 2016 took delegates to courts in Denmark and Sweden. The Scandinavian courts, through elegant design, incorporate tradition into modern settings and processes. Despite facing the same security threats as other court systems, Danish and Swedish courts remain open and accessible. Particular highlights include thoughtful use of art, imaginative court layouts...

The fourth Justice Environments Conference was organized around the issues that were topical, or policy questions that will become pressing in the medium-to long-term. The conference hosted debates on interpreters in court proceedings, developing flexible justice spaces, and using mobile technologies in court.

During the fourth tour in 2013, we visited Montreal and New York, including the University of Montreal’s cyberjustice lab, and the famous Red Hook Community Centre in Brooklyn. Montreal’s magnificent Cour d’Appel showed the advantages of generous nineteenth century designs – the building has had several uses over the years including as a music...

The third tour in 2011 involved courts in Barcelona and other parts of Catalonia, Luxembourg, Düsseldorf, and the historic Kammergericht in Berlin. Different funding models for new courts were explored, including one used by North-Rhine Westphalia’s state building agency that focuses on lifetime costs, and balances between sustainability, design excellence and functional outcomes. Even...

The second tour, in 2008, included European and international courts in Strasbourg, Luxembourg and The Hague. The tour included an architectural design exercise in the Peace Palace where groups outlined their ideal courtroom configurations for hearings involving alleged war crimes, human rights violations and disputes between nations. A common theme of all the designs...

The first tour in 2005 included memorable new French courts, including those by Jean Nouvel, Richard Rogers and Henri Cirani. One highlight was a mock trial in a special terrorism courtroom in Paris, conducted in French, English and Chinese and displaying the different court layouts used by each legal tradition. The Pontoise court illustrated...