TEN YEARS ON: problems remain, admits ex-Lord Chief Justice



On the tenth anniversary of his report on civil justice, Lord Woolf is still 'confident' about the English legal system, he told the Gazette this week. But problems still remain, among them the lack of timetabling in court cases and the continued failure to proactively case-manage by judges.



Speaking at an event in London last week, Lord Woolf acknowledged that the decade since his Access to Justice report had not brought total success.



'The commercial judges in particular were going to case manage cases in a way which would mean that there would never, ever be a problem, no matter how complex they are,' he said. But 'the fact of the matter is that the litigation is continually getting more complex'.



His successor as Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, said he intends to review long cases to learn what prevents them being shorter.



He also agreed with Lord Woolf that judges may not be strict enough: 'We may have to get tougher, and not be looking over our shoulder all the time at the dangers of article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to a fair trial.'



Lord Woolf said one solution could be to adopt the US docket system, where a diary of cases is run that lets judges use spare time more efficiently. 'If a judge does not know what case he is going to be hearing next, how can he do the preparations for that case which could perhaps be done on the lean days in the case he is hearing at the time?' he told the Gazette.



As to what his reforms have achieved, Lord Woolf said: 'I never thought that what I was doing was going to be the last word, and so it's proved.'



Rupert White