Its good to talk to judges

District judges and lawyers must liaise to avoid a series of crises caused by rapid changes in law, procedure, and technology, writes John FrenkelCase management in matrimonial ancillary relief proceedings, pension sharing on divorce, rationalised civil appeal routes, contingent fees, the Community Legal Service and the Human Rights Act 1998 all of those developments have arrived in the past 12 months.

And there is no sign of abatement.

Coming shortly are reforms in personal bankruptcy, enforcement of civil judgments and housing law and procedure.Law reform is one challenge, but technology presents a greater one.

The Court Service has ambitious plans to modernise civil justice.

There are pilot schemes for issuing application notices by e-mail in Preston and video conferencing in the Courts of Appeal in Cardiff and Leeds.

Some 55% of claim forms are being issued electronically; the Court Service target is 100% by 2005.

And we are promised relief from the current paperchase when the Court Service belatedly brings in its unified information system.District judges try to speak directly, frankly and frequently to practising lawyers.

The innovative Benchmarks column in the Gazette helps.

All district judges and their deputies receive our associations magazine and the editor welcomes contributions from practitioners.Do you find that different courts interpret the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (CPR) inconsistently? Say so through the newsletter.

You may persuade some judges that they are the ones out of step.Court business works better through consultation.

Last year saw two major case management problems.

The first was over credit hire litigation.

Virtually every claim was defended and could not have been tried without disrupting all other court business.

It is to be hoped that most of the outstanding ones will settle.The second involved the resurrection of moribund claims before last Aprils deadline.

After the horrors of automatic strike out under order 17, rule 11 of the former County Court Rules, district judges never dreamt that there would be so many static claims where nothing had happened for a year.

It took the courts nearly four months to catch up with the influx.

In neither instance did the claimants solicitors consider the institutional impact of their action or inaction.

We cannot afford breakdowns in communication on this scale.

Claims must be managed.

Judges and the profession must exchange information and forsee potential problems quickly.And if solicitors detect any trend of administrative inefficiency, the Court Service must be told with judges copied in.

The judiciary is as irritated as the practising profession when things go wrong.I worry about the new civil costs regime, particularly contingent fees.

Deciding costs will be difficult for the Court of Appeal and for district judges.

In every disputed costs assessment we must think about untested rules and make findings about the insurance market and risk evaluation.The first contested contingent fee hearings will take a considerable time to decide and will involve reserved judgments.

The Court of Appeal has listed the first appeal to challenge the percentage mark-up of a contingent fee.

Last autumn, 800 claims were issued in one court alone to recover after-the-event legal expenses insurance premiums in settled claims.

I understand that the designated civil judge heard selected claims so that appeals could be put the fast track to the Court of Appeal.If satellite litigation about costs is not to bring ordinary business to a standstill, there must be the highest degree of co-operation between the profession and the bench.

Everyone will have to consider how CPR part 19 parties and group litigation can be used imaginatively.

There are insufficient judicial resources to cope with substantial unplanned increases in work.District judges will support any reasonable initiative to ensure that the bench and the profession are mutually accessible.

We must exchange information routinely on the forthcoming changes, or we shall fail to live up to our obligations to the public.District Judge John Frenkel sits at Bristol Civil Trial Centre and is the newly elected President of the Association of District Judges