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It is coming up to 20 years since the CPR was introduced, and (in my view) it has not been a success. The old RSC/CCR were well known and most of us had some idea of how courts would view the rules and apply them (there was always some uncertainty, as with application of the law, hence 'litigation risk').

The CPR introduced valuable concepts, such as Part 36, but the original idea, that we would somehow get away from the procedural skirmishing, ignored human nature, and reinforced the judges' propensity for determinative procedural rulings. Jackson's reforms compounded the problem, by emphasising the procedure and making harsher penalties for infringement.

While one has to have a proper procedure, and there have to be sanctions available for non-compliance, at bottom it should be the law which decides cases, not the technical procedural rules.

A more paper based system would, in my view, assist (it is already common in arbitrations). There may be an element of (unconscious) protectionism involved, as Ian Pettifer hints, but to me it is a cultural change, not a substantive one. Too much is made of the shibboleth of oral argument, which (I seem to recall) only arose because of the short order nature of earlier cases.

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