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“I had to sell my dining room set to pay for the case.”
That is how Sami Khamis began describing to Noon Post the cost of defending himself in a case that could have sent him to prison.
Khamis, a driver for a shared transport vehicle, was at work a year ago when he struck a young man riding a motorcycle. The man suffered several fractures, but refused to drop the case, despite Khamis covering his medical expenses.
Prosecutors charged Khamis with negligently causing the man’s injuries and permanent disability, an offence punishable by up to one year in prison.
Prosecutors charged Khamis with negligently causing the man’s injuries, leading to legal expenses of nearly 50,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,000), highlighting the growing financial burden of legal costs and automated litigation services – documents, transactions, and procedures accessible through digital portals or machines rather than service counters.
His lawyer eventually secured his acquittal after a technical report found that Khamis had complied with traffic regulations and that the motorcyclist had entered the road in the wrong direction from a one-way street, causing the collision.
“My income does not exceed 12,000 pounds a month, and that is only if I do not miss a single day of work,” Khamis said. “The lawyer was taking more than half of that every month, either as an instalment towards his fees or to cover litigation expenses.”
He said his lawyer had already reduced his fees out of sympathy for his financial situation. But the additional costs of paperwork, notifications, and automated services continued to push up the final bill.
Khamis’s experience is shared by millions of Egyptians who enter the legal system not only to seek redress or defend themselves, but also to confront a bill that grows with every stage of a case.
Each expense, like obtaining documents or automated services, may seem small but can cause significant hardship for low-income litigants over time, fostering empathy and concern among the audience.
For many, the growing costs raise a critical question: can they truly access their constitutional right to justice, or are these fees undermining that fundamental guarantee?
That burden is taking on a new dimension as Egypt’s judicial system expands its use of digital and remote services.
The Justice Ministry promotes digitisation as a way to save time and effort, but as procedures move online and some services incur fees, digitalisation is also increasing the overall costs of navigating Egypt’s justice system, raising questions about affordability.
Paid notification and court-message packages are part of this broader shift.
For people like Khamis, the question is ultimately a simple one: as Egypt’s courts become increasingly digital, will access to justice become easier – or will it increasingly depend on who can afford to pay?
Litigation by package
As Egypt prepares to implement its new Criminal Procedure Law next October, the Justice Ministry launched a new digital platform at the end of August as part of its move towards remote litigation.
The platform, available through the ministry’s electronic portal, offers a range of services for lawyers appearing before first-instance criminal courts. Lawyers and litigants, as well as witnesses, experts and forensic doctors, can attend hearings remotely, obtain certified digital copies of case files, pay fees online and receive hearing decisions and scheduling notifications by text message.
But lawyers who have attempted to register for the service say access comes with a series of additional charges.
The platform requires lawyers to pay an annual subscription fee of 500 Egyptian pounds ($10), according to lawyers who used the registration system. They must also pay another 500 pounds to attend each remote felony hearing and 100 pounds for each detention renewal hearing.
Additional charges apply to documents, with the platform charging 10 pounds for every page copied from a criminal case file.
Lawyers can also subscribe to a text-message package costing 2,500 pounds for 500 messages, allowing them to receive hearing decisions as soon as they are issued.
While the ministry presents remote litigation as part of modernising Egypt’s justice system, the fees involved raise a key question: does moving court procedures online reduce the cost and effort of accessing justice, or does it simply add a new digital layer of expenses that could hinder affordability?
“As a lawyer, I cannot ultimately cover these expenses out of my own pocket, so they are passed on to the citizen, even when they cannot afford them.”
Ahmed al-Jarhi, a lawyer, told Noon Post that the rising cost of litigation and case-related services has begun to influence some clients’ decisions about whether to go to court at all.
He said some clients abandon the idea of filing a lawsuit after learning how much they may have to pay for automated litigation services. He fears the same could happen as remote litigation expands and additional digital fees are added to the cost of pursuing a case.
Al-Jarhi said he had personally attempted to register on the remote litigation platform and identified the fees imposed on lawyers as one of the problems that emerged during its implementation.
Those costs, he argued, will ultimately be passed on to clients because lawyers cannot be expected to absorb them indefinitely. Although participation in the system is officially optional, Al-Jarhi expects it could eventually become unavoidable in practice. Even if lawyers sought to boycott the platform, he said, legal deadlines would leave them little choice but to use it when necessary to protect their clients’ interests.
He also warned that the cumulative cost of litigation could encourage some parties to settle disputes outside court, even when the resulting agreement is not entirely fair, to avoid the expense of legal proceedings.
The problem is particularly acute in criminal cases, he said. Unlike civil litigants, defendants in misdemeanour and felony cases cannot simply withdraw from proceedings. They remain subject to legal representation costs and procedural requirements regardless of their ability to pay.
No fees without a law
“The tax system and other public levies aim to develop state resources and achieve social justice and economic development. Public taxes may not be created, amended or abolished except by law, and exemptions from them are permitted only in the cases specified by law. No one may be required to pay anything other than such taxes or fees except within the limits of the law.”
That is Article 38 of Egypt’s 2014 Constitution.
The provision establishes that taxes and public fees must have a legal basis. Yet lawyers argue this principle has not prevented court administrations from imposing and increasing litigation-related charges.
The issue came to a head in March 2025, when courts, including the Cairo Court of Appeal, began increasing litigation fees and imposing charges for certificates, document copies and other procedures required during civil and criminal proceedings, according to lawyers familiar with the changes.
Lawyers say the additional costs have made it harder for some people to pursue claims or defend their rights in court. They now fear that expanding remote litigation could add another layer of costs to an already expensive process.
In early September, a group of lawyers filed an urgent case before the Administrative Court of the State Council seeking the suspension and cancellation of fees imposed for subscribing to and using the remote litigation platform.
The plaintiffs argued that the fees violate Articles 97 and 98 of the Constitution, which guarantee the right to litigation and the right to defence. In their view, the charges impose a financial burden that could obstruct access to justice.
They also invoked Article 38, arguing that taxes and public fees can only be imposed within the framework of the law and cannot be introduced through an administrative decision. Setting such charges administratively, they argued, encroaches on the legislature’s authority.
The lawsuit also cited previous rulings by Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court and Supreme Administrative Court. According to the plaintiffs, those rulings established that modernising the judicial system and introducing new technologies do not, in themselves, provide a legal basis for imposing additional financial burdens outside the legislative framework.
The dispute therefore goes beyond whether Egypt’s courts should go digital. It raises a more fundamental question about the legal limits of charging for access to the services through which citizens exercise their constitutional right to justice.
Additional burdens
Although the General Bar Association has yet to issue an official statement on the matter, Saeed Abdel Khaleq, undersecretary of the Lawyers Syndicate, said lawyers oppose the new fees because of their impact on the overall cost of litigation.
“In the end, the citizen is the one who will bear these fees before the lawyer does,” Abdel Khaleq told Noon Post. “The lawyer receives his fee for the work he does on the case, while the expenses imposed by the system are either deducted from his fee or passed on to the client.”
He said the accumulation of charges for judicial and automated services could push legal fees higher in the coming period, as lawyers would be unable to absorb the additional costs for their clients.
Abdel Khaleq also questioned whether the remote litigation system had been sufficiently tested before being expanded. He said a longer trial period would have allowed authorities to identify and address practical problems, particularly as services related to accessing case files now carry additional charges.
This, he argued, raises a broader question about the purpose of digitisation: is it intended primarily to make litigation faster and easier, or is it also becoming a mechanism for collecting new fees from those who use the judicial system?
The syndicate has objected to the fees on legal and constitutional grounds, Abdel Khaleq said. He argued they were not introduced through legislation submitted to and approved by the House of Representatives, but through a decision by the Supreme Council of Presidents of the Courts of Appeal, which he said raises questions about the authority under which the charges were imposed.
Litigation is a constitutional right, but lawyers say the growing cost of accessing the courts risks making that right increasingly difficult to exercise for people with limited incomes.
For those whose rights have already been violated, particularly defendants in criminal cases who cannot opt out of proceedings, the costs can be unavoidable. Lawyers worry that a justice system designed to become more accessible through digitisation could instead create additional financial barriers for the people who can least afford them.