That is how one judge summarizes the case for adopting the oral procedures that now apply to all family, juvenile and criminal cases in El Salvador. For those who work in the judicial sector, this has been one of the most difficult aspects of the reform. Despite significant training and education efforts, the majority of the country’s lawyers and many of its judges were either unwilling or unprepared for such a radical change, and the transition continues to encounter resistance.

Yet judicial professionals who have learned oral procedure and are using it on a daily basis clearly support it. The most enthusiastic advocates are in the family and juvenile courts, which have been using oral procedure for five and four years, respectively. Doris Luz Rivas, a judge in the First Juvenile Court in San Salvador, says oral procedures have improved the credibility of judges by forcing them to deal more directly with citizens. “In the past, some judges delegated everything and didn’t even show up to sign the verdicts,” she says. “Now the judge has to listen to each youth, she has to listen to the prosecutor and to the public defender, and she has to justify her verdict in front of all the parties.”

In addition to making judges more accountable for their decisions, oral procedures concentrate the judicial process by forcing all interested parties to gather at one time, in one place. Issues that once required numerous written submissions are now resolved on the spot. This has helped to shrink the average length of a criminal case from three years to four months.

According to many practitioners, oral procedures also make it harder to corrupt the process. “The old system worked on the basis of friendships,” says Arístides Perla, the public defender profiled on this page. “I was a good defender if I had good friends in the court. There were no controls on evidence, no controls on the process, no controls on the judge because everything took place behind closed doors. In an oral trial the victim, the defender, the prosecutor and the judge are all exercising control over each other.”