Court reforms hit cash barrier

Our report on the invitation-only Commercial Court summit (see story), which took place on 30 October, had a familiar ring about it. This is because many of the ideas that have emerged from the summit received a thorough airing at the Legal Week Litigation Forum, which took place in September.

The clamour for better-resourced commercial judges equipped with the necessary tools to keep all those expensively assembled legal teams at bay is getting ever louder. The problem, of course, is that the vast bulk of the reforms suggested both at the Legal Week conference and Mr Justice David Steel’s symposium require something that is in very short supply: cash.

Much has been made of the so-called docketing system that is deployed in the US to such effect. Under this system judges take control of cases at the start and oversee them until they are finished. It makes a lot of sense. But in his opening speech to the Legal Week conference in September, the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, anticipated calls for such a system by revealing that he had considered it at the time of the civil justice reforms and ruled it out because it would be too expensive. If anything resources are even tighter today. It is hard to imagine the Treasury approving the sudden influx of new judges that would be necessary to make the system work. That would hardly be considered a vote winner.

It has also been suggested that the UK should import the judicial assistant system from the States. This sees the most talented young lawyers working for leading judges before being snapped up by New York’s finest firms. Unlike in London, where judicial assistants are regarded as dogsbodies, assistants in the US actually help judges with their judgments. A typical judge might also have a team of assistants working for him or her. This kind of back-up seems inconceivable within the penny-pinching UK court system.

"Judges are overworked and under-paid; they are on a treadmill," said Lord Grabiner QC at the Legal Week forum. "How can you juggle preparation of a judgment as well as getting on with what is in front of you? I cannot imagine why anybody would take the job and that responsibility."

For a full report of the Legal Week Litigation Forum click here

john.malpas@legalweek.com