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Anon @ 12.57pm. I take your point regarding the "judge Rinder type, one person's word against another" cases, but I think you are mistaken.

I say that because much of what I am involved in on a day to day basis is this type of civil and low value commercial litigation.

Up here in the sticks, we do not get sophisticated business clients who come in with their General Counsel and say "we wish to initiate the break clause trigger in the second schedule to the contract on account of excessive delay. We anticipate that if the matter doesn't settle, on disclosure the opponent will have to reveal the terms of their agreement with the subcontractor which will show they did not adequately resource the contract".

What we get is:- "Look mate, we went on site and he was taking the p*ss. I'm down £35k now, so I want £25k or nothing. It's just a joke. Get it in court, dead simply this case mate."

And what we get from the other side (if they ever respond) is "your guy's a total pr*ck. I've tried to tell him we can't do the third Sunday and he knew about it, but if he'd have got his lazy a*se lads on site on the Monday it would have been fine".

And the Defence, when filed, is "I DON'T OW NOTHING. HE COULD OF TALKED TO ME ABOUT THIS TO SETTLE AMICABLE BUT NOW HE CAN SEE ME IN COURT".

My point - the only reason a case like that isn't one word against another, is precisely because of the input of lawyers.

You can take lawyers out of the system, of course you can. The world will not stop turning. Small businesses will not stop having cashflow problems and fabricating disputes. Unreasonable people will not stop arguing unreasonably.

And the cases will still reach court. And an online court judge will make a decision based on whether or not the winning party was fortunate enough to have said the right thing at the right time unprompted.

However, whether such a legal system could ever be described as fair, and whether Bob the Builder's claim against Mega-Corp International PLC would ever succeed, and whether the nation as a whole would benefit from the continued promulgation of the rule of law in civil relations, is an entirely different issue.