By Auttasak Sulaiman and Sudthapa Thanathanya

Filing court documents in Thailand has, until recently, required an in-person trip to the applicable court, which can be both time consuming and expensive for ongoing litigation involving multiple hearings.  While the Civil Procedure Code was amended to allow for electronic filing of court documents back in October 2015,  the regulations outlining the e-filing process from Thailand’s Supreme Court Chief Justice have only recently come into effect on 4 May 2017.

E-filing will be gradually introduced to the Thai court system.  Currently, the only courts eligible for e-filing are the Civil Court, Bangkok South Civil Court and the Thon Buri Civil Court and only for matters involving sales, hire of property, mortgage, pledge and suretyship, lending, hire-purchase and credit cards.

Under the new regulations, lawyers can now make an appointment for the first hearing for a matter through the e-filing system and will receive notifications via mobile phone whenever the court has made an order pertaining to such matter (although lawyers will still need to log into the court system to check the details of such order).

For e-filing registration, please see the following link: http://efiling.coj.go.th/TH/index.html

For more information about Thai courts and dispute resolution in general, please see the knowledge section of our website here.