Lawyers must embrace case management reforms, says Jackson
Lord Justice Jackson has stressed that lawyers need to embrace his proposed reforms of case management if the necessary ‘culture change’ he envisages is to be realised.
The architect of the government’s reform of civil litigation hopes that by securing the co-operation of the Law Society and Bar Council, the profession will not be ‘taken by surprise’ by the far-reaching measures.
This co-operation will be crucial, he said, if there are to be ‘fewer casualties’ of the process than there were in Singapore - a jurisdiction where ‘shock tactics’ were effective in reforming an inefficient court system.
Jackson was delivering the latest in a series of lectures on implementing his reform programme, entitled ‘Achieving a culture change in case management’. Following recent meetings with the bar chair and Society president, Jackson said he understood both to be ‘generally supportive’ of his package of case management reforms.
‘Singapore practitioners and judges have made the point to me that there was insufficient forewarning of the profession and insufficient dialogue with the profession about what lay in store. Hopefully we can avoid that mistake in England and Wales,’ he said.
Jackson outlined various Civil Procedure Rule amendments that will be held ‘in escrow’ until the ‘big bang’ - implementation of Part 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is presently in the Lords. ‘A change in the culture of case management is more likely to be achieved if all the main reforms are introduced simultaneously, rather than sequentially over a period of time.’
These changes include more rigorous enforcement of case directions given by the court; and court monitoring of compliance directions, pre-empting the need for sanctions. Jackson noted in particular that claimant personal injury solicitors had complained that the courts ‘let liability insurers off the hook for failing to comply with the pre-action protocol and case management directions’.
He said that these changes should coincide with more effective judicial training and measures to assign cases to designated judges with relevant expertise.
Further case management recommendations not being taken forward now could be introduced in future legislation, he suggested.
These include a proposal that pre-action applications should be permitted where one party refuses to comply with a pre-action protocol, and allowing district judges occasionally to sit in the Court of Appeal as assessors when case management issues arise.
Read the speech.
Comments
this guy is so full of ....,
this guy is so full of ...., he has no clue, this wont work more costs more litigation, Mr Cameron and his soldiers the political arm of the rich. When did Jackson become an expert on costs, look at his background he has never dealt with a PI claim in his life, how many assessments has he attended thats right none, from now on if you want advice about a new car dont go to clarkson go to Jackson!
Woolf Revisited
Been there, done that, didn't like it...............
Jackson
The difficulty is with Lord Jackson's approach appears to be who he took advice from. How many small 1-5 partner practices did he actually personally visit? We do not all have hi-tech networks with fancy case management software which produce bills at the click of a button. We do not all have unlimited resources. Likewise, we're not all like the insurance lobby who can afford to charge low rates because the bills are not scrutinized and reduced on assessment
Woolf was a clown and so is
Woolf was a clown and so is Jackson.
Neither has had any experience of the real world and how litigation works at ground level.
as any fule know
To echo the comments above, how out of touch is he? This is an extract from his speech.
"5.1 Recommendation 85. This is a proposal that pre-action applications should be permitted where one party refuses to comply with a pre-action protocol. This recommendation requires primary legislation. Provision is not made for this in the current Bill.17 I understand, however, that such a provision might be considered for inclusion in the next civil justice Bill."
He seems to think this is a new idea. In fact such applications are so frequent and routine that my local court block lists them. I don't like being lectured about 'embracing reform' from someone so ill informed.
At the moment we have Lord LLeveson holdinhg an enquiry about the media. We wouldn't have had this if Jackson had been implemented 10 years ago.
complaint against a solicitor
The Legal Ombudsman is the body to handle complaints against solicitors if you have not had any reply from the managing partner.
I am not surprised that you
I am not surprised that you describe yourself as "anony mouse" in reply to Olga Martin's letter and meekly suggest the Legal Ombudsman is the place for complaints. Olga has expressed her grievances in a factual and articulate manner when some Solicitors like to pretend that anyone who is negative towards them is vindictive, crazy and a "Client from Hell".
I too, had stumbled across Solicitors from Hell as it had become a powerful 'machine' with its ability to cross reference information, attract huge press coverage and positive feedback from both the press and "consumers". Although there were some articles on the site that ideally should have been removed the Solicitors from Hell site had become a plausible and viable alternative to the Legal Ombudsman.
This is a modern age of web based information and the prototype of future "consumer" led information was born - with Solicitors from Hell. A future model needs modifications and possibly a name change! The Legal Ombudsman is not the voice of the "consumer" and I don't believe it ever can be. The Legal Profession needs to have INTEGRITY for it to survive and brushing negative feed back under the carpet won't achieve that. Few people would want to see the demise of the Legal Profession but many people are disillusioned, angry and frustrated by their experiences.
I do try and keep off your Blogs but I am PASSIONATE about this topic because of my personal experiences with a firm of Solicitors (and their Negligence Solicitor) that have left me completely shocked and disbelieving at what has happened. And no the Legal Ombudsman would not even address the issues I have as the time limit has expired for a start. Six months is not a long time in the Legal world..........the Ombudsman has probably 'rid' itself of most grievances on that criteria alone.
Ombudsman
I think the point of the comment by "anony mouse" is that this is supposed to be a discussion of case management reforms, not a discussion about bad solicitors and routes of complaint. I would add that not at all solicitors agreed with the Law Society's decision to sue Rick Kordowski. Some of us regarded it as poor judgment on the part of Society and a waste of money. The reason I regarded it as a waste of money was that, fairly obviously, people would find alternative websites upon which to express their views.
It is ironic that one of the websites which is now being used for that purpose is that of the Law Society Gazette. However, the Gazette really is not the appropriate (still less the best) forum for airing grievances about solicitors, not least because it will not give you any redress. If you were poorly served by a solicitor and suffered loss as a result, why even bother with the SRA or the Ombudsman? Get a good solicitor and sue the bad solicitor.
Quite. There are many
Quite. There are many solicitors out there who specialise in costs in disputes and professional negligence of other solicitors. Most won't charge you an up-front fee.
Of course there are some
Of course there are some Solicitors that are so bad that even when the good ones threaten to report them to the SRA they take no notice.......maybe it is because they are on the SRA adjudication panel that they act as if they are accountable to no-one.
Even when a Professional Negligence Solicitor threatens them with a Court Order for disclosure they still drag their heels and act as if they are accountable to no-one. They don't really even try to legitimise their actions or attempt to sort issues out as ultimately they knew that as Residual Beneficiaries we had no established rights in the eyes of the Law. If only we could have just taken them to Court......if only the world really was as simple as DomCoop wants to make it....
I meant intervention panel,
I meant intervention panel, not adjucation panel................and so are their Negligence Solicitors...........on the intervention panel..........that is.......... not the adjucation panel...........and..........yes the whole business has, perhaps, sent me a little crazy...........but what can you expect..........the way they have treated us.................and robbed us........ and what can we do about it...................Legal Ombudsman..........tell me another joke............
Petri Chebri.............never let a Solicitor be your Executor.........HOW RIGHT YOU ARE
Beneficiaries
From looking at Maureen Carroll's postings under previous articles, it seems that her grievance is that "beneficiaries have no established rights in the eyes of the law" (her words, from her posting dated 23 August 2011). If it is correct that beneficiaries have no established rights in the eyes of the law (and, given White v Jones, it is not quite right, at least in the context of making the will, rather than advising on taxation issues at the time of making the will (though see Vinton v Fladgate Fielder [2010] EWHC 904 (Ch)) or the manner of administering the estate), that is not a matter which the Law Society, the SRA or the Ombudsman can solve, because none of those organisations makes the law. If the problem is something to do with alleged overcharging by a solicitor executor or an alleged conflict of interest between a solicitor executor and the beneficiaries of a will (as some of Ms Carroll's other postings suggest), there might be both a cause for complaint to the SRA/Ombudsman and a cause of action.
The short point is that Ms Carroll needs a good solicitor to guide her through the maze, both in relation to complaints and potential causes of action. If the correct analysis is that there is neither a cause for complaint nor a cause of action, that is the fault of the law, not of the organisations which represent or regulate its practitioners.