"Judge Zhou, what you say is what you say, when you come to the court, I will believe the judge." In a private lending case, Zhou Yongting was doing mediation work with the plaintiff, and the plaintiff said to Zhou Yongting on the phone.
Zhou Yongting entered the Xishan District People's Court of Kunming In 2010 and has worked in the Case Filing Division and the Expedited Adjudication Division. Since entering the expedited adjudication team of the case filing division in 2016, it has handled more than 4,000 cases. In 2019, he was rated as an "excellent judge" for his outstanding work and excellent achievements. In December 2021, he was awarded the "Red Flag Case Handling Pacesetter" in the first area of the city's grass-roots courts.
Listen carefully and respond sincerely
Every time she heard the parties say, "I believe in the court, I believe in the judges," Zhou Yongting always felt a heavy burden on her shoulders, and she always believed that the purpose of handling the case was not only to close the case, but also to sincerely respond to the people's ardent desire for judicial fairness and judicial justice.
Zhou Yongting believes that in the process of handling cases, in addition to carrying out litigation procedures in accordance with the law, the most important part of responding to the people's demands for fairness and justice is to listen carefully. "In order to efficiently handle a large number of cases, we will extract the relationship of rights and obligations and pay attention to the facts of the case module, such as whether the two parties signed an IOU in a private lending case, whether the money was delivered, etc., but this may filter out the details of the case and the lack of response to the emotional demands of the parties in the case, and conduct structured listening, which to a large extent allows the judge to return to the case and respond reasonably to the emotions of the parties." When answering the parties' phone calls or listening to statements, I habitually draw three grids in my head and put three things into them: what emotions the parties express, what facts the parties provide, and what the parties expect from the judge, and then respond to the emotions of the parties, sort out the facts stated by the parties, and clarify the direction of action next. She said.
Once, Zhou Yongting was reviewing the file materials of the case held the next day, and found that the parties submitted copies of the evidence that lacked the transfer voucher, so they called to communicate with the parties, because it was close to the end of the work time, the parties said: "Tomorrow there will be a trial before you tell me, where do I go to find evidence for you, the facts of the case are like this, I did not lie, you judges are so troublesome to handle a small case." Zhou Yongting then responded to the parties according to the structured listening: "Now it is close to the end of work to call you to submit relevant evidence materials, you must be anxious, today is definitely too late to deal with, the trial is tomorrow afternoon, tomorrow morning there is time to handle, what difficulties encountered in the handling process can communicate with me." Only when a judge clarifies the facts of the case in accordance with the law can you effectively guarantee your rights. After several rounds of communication, the parties finally calmly agreed to retrieve the transfer voucher the next day, and finally said that they were in a hurry just now, the tone was not very polite, and hoped that the judge would understand.
Zhou Yongting believes that as long as you listen to the structure and respond sincerely in individual cases, you can convey the temperature of justice.
Clear division of labor and efficient conclusion of cases
The average number of cases concluded by the expedited adjudication judge team of the case filing division is more than 1,000 cases, and the ratio of personnel in each expedited adjudication team is "one judge + one assistant + one clerk + one mediator", and carrying out trial work in a reasonable and orderly manner is the key to completing the task of closing cases with quality and quantity. "The trial can be seen as a production process, the 'product' we produce is a judgment document, how to ensure the efficient and high-quality operation of the entire production process, the division of labor and cooperation between the team is the top priority." Zhou Yongting said.
Zhou Yongting dismantled the trial work into each production link on the production line, and the corresponding personnel were responsible for the screening link, mediation link, service link, trial link, post-trial collation link, judgment document production link, judgment announcement link, file sorting and scanning link. She believes that judges should be responsible for the mediation link, the trial link, and the production of judgment documents. At the same time, team members are encouraged to pay attention to accumulating experience in the case handling process, enriching the specifications of each "production link" to strengthen their use, mobilizing the autonomy and initiative of team members, and carrying out trial work in accordance with laws and regulations around the task and goal of case closure.
Modularity of adjudication documents
Ensure quality and efficiency
The expedited adjudication judge team of the case filing division is the first pass for the diversion of cases after the whole court files and accepts the case, responsible for filtering and handling cases with small disputes, clear facts, and clear relationships of rights and obligations, and for cases in which the two parties cannot reach mediation, they must be tried quickly and quickly. Faced with the writing of judgment documents in a large number of cases, Zhou Yongting used the method of making documents by universal templates to produce judgment documents.
Zhou Yongting decomposes the judgment documents of contract cases (such as financial loan disputes, private lending disputes, sales contract disputes, lease contract disputes, etc.) into modules such as contract formation and effectiveness, contract performance, contract breach, etc., and puts the corresponding legal provisions into the general judgment document template, and when making the case judgment documents, matches and retrieves the corresponding large premise document modules, connects the legal facts of the case and explains the theoretical evidence, which greatly improves the efficiency of the production of documents. At the same time, it ensures the rigor and normativity of the application of law and the reasoning of the document.
Accumulate practical thinking on adjudication
Enhance the ability to argue theory
If the Excel table screening tool is used to count the types of cases handled by the expedited judge team, it will be found that there will be 30 or 40 kinds of cases received by each team, which brings great challenges to the judges who quickly and accurately apply the law and ensure efficient conclusion of the case.
In the process of handling a case, Zhou Yongting encounters difficulties in the application of law or the parties have a large dispute over the application of law, and pays great attention to thinking about various interpretations and understandings of the application of law, and discusses the application of law with other judges undertaking the case, sorts out and records the conclusions of the thinking and research, and puts them into her own trial practice research folder, and the next time she encounters the same type or similar law application issues, she can improve the efficiency and accuracy of law application. "Thinking about and sorting out the application of law can constantly improve one's own thinking on trial practice and constantly enhance one's ability to explain theoretical evidence to judgment documents." Zhou Yongting said.
Source丨 Publicity Office, Xishan Court
Edited by Wei Xiaolu
First instance 丨 Wu Yi
Second instance 丨 Zhang Haolin
Third trial 丨 Liu Xin
【Source: Kunming Intermediate Court】