Solicitor Richard Bretton believes he has just taken part in the last-ever lengthy quantum-only trial.

It is not a passing he will mourn.The trial - to set damages for Peter Vernon, who saw his two young daughters drown after the car they were in plunged into a river - lasted a mammoth 71 days.

It would have been longer still had the judge, Mr Justice Sedley, not anticipated th e Lord Chief Justice's subsequent practice direction and imposed time limits on cross-examination.The case was significant for other reasons, too.

Mr Vernon was awarded £1.1m damages, which included compensation for the financial losses and extra costs he faces because of psychological damage caused by watching his daughters die.Mr Bretton, head of health and safety at Bristol-based Osborne Clarke, said: 'This case confirmed what we should have known already: if you have an identifiable psychological illness then you will be properly compensated for all the financial consequences of that illness.' In Mr Vernon's case, these included nursing care and compensation for future loss of earnings, as the trauma reduced him from being a successful businessman to being unemployable.

Mr Bretton denies suggestions that the decision will open the floodgates for similar claims but concedes that, in any event, the insurers are almost certain to appeal.Mr Bretton welcomed the intervention of the trial judge to truncate the hearing - although whether he would feel the same had the case gone the other way is not clear.

He likens the new system to 'a three-round fight, as opposed to a 12-round fight.

You have to get your best punches in quicker.

People will have to be fitter and more focused.'Time limits will mean an end to what he calls 'defensive' lawyering - throwing in everything including the kitchen sink if for no other reason than to stop a disgruntled client from accusing you of negligence later on - and a corresponding redefinition of 'excellence' in representation.

At the moment excellence denotes being thorough in the extreme.

In the future it will mean being able to identify the key issues - and using whatever time is allotted to best effect, he says.For example, around 20 of Mr Vernon's friends and relatives were lined up to comment on how witnessing the accident had changed him.

'We were under a duty to call every witness who could tip the balance.

But with a limited number of rounds you will need to pick and put in your best players.

If you know you have three hours of witnesses, you have to decide how you can win the case in that time.

Do we have 12 at five minutes each or one biggie?' said Mr Bretton.He accepts that there are dangers inherent in moves towards shortening trials.

'There is a danger that issues which might have influenced the judge and changed his decision have not been aired, or have not been aired properly.'However, Mr Bretton believes this is a risk which may be worth taking.

'Which is the greater injustice? A system where only two or three people in 100 can afford the current Rolls Royce service, or one where 60 people can drive a Lada, which occasionally crashes?' Whether, of course, users of the current system regard it as a Rolls Royce service (even if they are paying Rolls Royce prices) is a moot point.Interestingly, the case also highlights how reforms intended to speed cases and make them cheaper can have the opposite effect.

Written witness statements were originally seen as a way of reducing the time needed for cross examination.

However, many lawyers now complain that they can substantially add to the time and expense involved, as the parties spend weeks honing their statements which run to epic proportions.

In the Vernon case there was a huge amount of documentation, as the plaintiff had for many years prior to the accident kept meticulous records of his life.

'If it moved, he photographed it,' said Mr Bretton.

When Osborne Clarke took over the case in 1990 (after Mr Vernon had passed throug h the hands of four previous firms), it inherited nine boxes of his papers, taking some 20 to 30 pages to catalogue.All this information had to be incorporated in Mr Vernon's subsequent witness statement, which ran to 300 pages.

'In a 15-month period, I spent 61 days at my client's house preparing it,' said Mr Bretton.

It is for this reason - because supposed 'improvements' to the system can backfire - that Mr Bretton is keen that the impact of the latest changes should be carefully monitored.Another way of making access to justice affordable to more people is to keep them out of court altogether.

'I always say to my junior staff when I see them looking to the white book or the green book: "Oh, it's that bad is it?" Things must be pretty desperate if you are having to resort to the small print.'Mr Bretton is a trained mediator and enthusiastic proponent of the art.

So far, he has mediated two personal injury cases.

The last one involved a worker at a freezer centre who claimed to have damaged her back through lifting frozen turkeys.

Although she was legally aided, her solicitors agreed to the suggestion from the insurance company's lawyers that the case should be mediated.

According to Mr Bretton, both sides had good, experienced lawyers, and both had apparently strong expert reports.

She was seeking £200,000; the insurers were offering £10,000.Eventually, after ten hours of mediation, an offer of £40,000 was accepted.

'The thing that was fascinating about it was whether the process would result in something which I, as an expert, regarded as unfair.

However, although, as mediator, I merely encouraged them, they reached a settlement which I not only regarded as fair but which was not a decision which a court would have reached.'Both sides said to him afterwards independently that they felt they had won.

'If it had gone to trial, the plaintiff would either have won altogether or lost altogether,' he said.Unbeknown to the insurers, the woman was terrified of going into the witness box and, in reality, the case would never have reached trial.

'Her solicitors were very clever.

They got her £10,000 when they were staring at nothing,' he says.

Unbeknown to the plaintiff, on the other hand, the insurers had earlier sacked their main witness - which left a rather large hole in their case.