Digital Archiving of Legal Records and Access to Justice in Nigerian Courts: A Case Study of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory

This study analyses the digital archiving of legal records and its relationship to access to justice outcomes in the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Court record management directly affects the speed and integrity of justice delivery, and the digitisation of legal records has been proposed as a solution to delays arising from manual record-keeping inefficiencies. The research employs a case study design with mixed-methods data collection targeting court registrars, judges' clerks, legal practitioners, and court administration officers. Structured questionnaires and semi-structured interview guides are used alongside documentary analysis of court records management policy documents. The Records Management Lifecycle Framework and the Access to Justice Theory provide the theoretical grounding, with literature from 2020 to 2024 on judicial records management in Nigeria and Africa supporting the analysis. The study examines digital archiving system quality, retrieval speed, data integrity, and the measurable correlation with case processing time reductions. It also investigates barriers including digitisation funding shortfalls and legacy record backlogs. Recommendations target the National Judicial Council and the FCT High Court Chief Judge's office. Keywords: digital archiving, legal records, access to justice, Federal Capital Territory, court administration