At the recent Law Society conference Lord Woolf described medical negligence as 'an area of peculiar difficulty'.

It is both difficult and peculiar and there seems to be an enormous wave of support building for reform of the process.A large number of people working in different parts of the medical negligence system are assisting Lord Woolf's inquiry in a number of working groups and I am attempting to co-ordinate this.

The objective is a much better medical treatment and dispute resolution system which is less damaging to patients' health.

We have been able to involve health service managers, patients and their representatives, the royal colleges and other doctors' representatives, represent atives of the nursing professions, academics in several disciplines, mediators, court officials, many of the professional institutions involved in law and medicine, medical expert witnesses, quantum expert witnesses and, of course, barristers and solicitors acting for both sides.The multi-disciplinary approach has been most useful in helping to devise solutions.

The response from everyone concerned has been really remarkable.

Time is short as the programme of consultation must end by the end of February 1996.

However, we hope that the liaisons we have been able to establish will continue.

Some working groups will have a life far beyond the inquiry: for example, a group of GP representatives and mediation organisations working with patients' representatives to devise a system for mediating small GP claims; and a liaison group between Action for Victims of Medical Accidents (AVMA) staff and the claims manager group, ALARM.The Law Society's contributionThe Law Society's civil litigation committee's medical negligence working party, chaired by John Greenwood, contains a number of enthusiastic plaintiff and defendant solicitors who have been working on the Society's recommendations to Lord Woolf in this area.

This is the same group which produced the protocol for disclosure of patients' records which has now been approved by the Department of Health and should be used by all claimants' solicitors in obtaining records from hospitals in pre-action discovery.

Suzanne Burn, the committee secretary, has organised this working party into two different sorts of debating forums: a group of defendant solicitors discussing their particular view of the reform problem (very valuable as there exists no group of defendant solicitors at present) and small working groups of plaintiff and defendant representatives working out a common view of the options.

I often cite the work of this group to people in other sectors of the medical negligence world who do not believe that solicitors from both sides can work together to devise a system which is more effective and economical for consumers than the present one.Defendant lawyersLord Woolf will be meeting defendant solicitors on 20 November in London.

The reforms pose considerable practical problems for defendants and their clients (as well as great benefits) and we want practitioners' input into the process.

A number of organisations have arranged other meetings for specialist lawyers.Liability expertsOur liability experts' working group has been preparing a major survey of the views of all medical negligence liability experts on any register.

There will be a meeting primarily of specialist lawyers and liability experts to discuss the impact of the Woolf reforms on the use of liability experts and other general reforms in this area on 27 November 1995 at 6pm.

We will be discussing means of agreeing factual evidence, appointing court or joint experts wherever possible, experts' meetings and other technical issues.

The major liability experts conference is being organised for the inquiry by Bond Solon and will be introduced by Lord Woolf.

It will be on 15 January 1996 at Church House, Westminster.

A major conference for doctors is being organised for the inquiry by the Royal Society of Medicine for 31 January 1996.

Quantum expertsExpert evidence relating only to quantum can clearly be rationalised more easily than liability evidence; there will be an open meeting on 11 December which will be addressed by Adrian Whitfield QC, Keith Carter (of Keith Carter & Associates, employment experts), M ark Scoggins (of Davies Arnold & Cooper) and Anne Winyard (partner in Leigh Day & Co).

We hope a number of quantum experts will be present and this will be an opportunity to work out technical issues and to discuss with them how they would feel if asked to provide joint reports.

Case managementWe have a small working group which has been discussing case management problems and we hope to recruit further help from case management experts and judges to plan a major open case management meeting.

We are also looking at the particular problems of summary disposal in this area (as Lord Woolf's reforms involve a method of summary disposal for claims as well as defences) and there will be an open meeting of lawyers (including judges) liability experts and doctors (on a date to be fixed) to consider how this could work.Small claims resolutionWe are exploring ways of getting smaller claims resolved without litigation and of litigating smaller claims much more cheaply and quickly.

There will be a major workshop on the subject in London in February, being organised by Nottingham School of Law for the inquiry.

-- Confirmation of dates and venue details for all meetings referred to in this article are available from the Medical Negligence Working Group, 51 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8PP.