Category Archives: Opinion

Court fees boost to mediation

With the speed of the fanatic, the Government has confirmed a massive rise in the cost of civil litigation with effect from next Monday March 9th, rather earlier than originally announced. According to the Law Society, whose table is reproduced below, some civil court fees will rise by 622% and even the smallest increase is… Read More »

Never in the field of litigation……

With apologies to Winston Churchill, never in the field of litigation has so much been owed to so few. I have been away from the world of blogging and most other forms of social media for some months. It has been a liberating experience which has allowed me to think about the world I used… Read More »

Who will bid more than £10 million?

Some time way back last year, there was dissatisfaction expressed in certain quarters that a two-tier system was evolving in relation to the cases which were to be the subject of the cost budgeting rules introduced as part of the Jackson Big Bang reforms. Put simply, while the “smaller” cases were to be subject to… Read More »

Open All Hours

 The Aussies have done it again! Not satisfied with trouncing Cook’s boys 5-0 in the recent Ashes series (I prefer not to mention the one day series and the T20, poor as they were, because it is the result of the five match Ashes series which hurts), the New South Wales Attorney General has announced that a Virtual Registry is now… Read More »

Susskind supports Casey Flaherty approach

In various posts last year I highlighted the views of Casey Flaherty, General Counsel of Kia Motors America, Inc. Casey espouses the view that lawyers who want to work for his company need to understand that the world has changed and that with it comes the responsibility to understand the contribution which technology can make… Read More »

Ave atque Vale Legal Tech New York 2014

Over the past weeks, my email inbox has been inundated with advertisements for products, invitations to events and parties and general exhortations to visit this booth and that at Legal Tech 2014. The event is taking place this week in New York. Billed as the premier legal technology show on Earth, the gathering takes place at the Hilton… Read More »

Predictions for 2014

A little later than normal, I have remembered it is the time of year for predictions. Usually this happens in December or early January so, on any view, I am a fraction late this year. The Society of Computers and Law publishes predictions gleaned from a number of people in the IT and E discovery industry… Read More »

Off we go again!

As the New Year starts and everyone goes back to work, thoughts will inevitably turn to how lawyers should deal with the new rules which came into force last year. Actually, I have decided that I should no longer refer to them as the “new” rules. The civil justice reforms have been in effect since… Read More »

Too soon to say

“It is too soon to say.” Attributed to the former Chinese Premier, Chou en Lai (or Zhou Enlai), this response was, probably erroneously, thought to have referred to the effect of the 1789 French Revolution!  These days, it appears to be more widely accepted that the words referred to the street protests in France and… Read More »

Less is More

I have recently finished reading “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” by Richard Susskind. If you are interested in the practice of law in the future, I urge you to read this book.  As a commentator on the law and lawyers, Richard Susskind is thought provoking and fascinating with eloquent views on the future of the profession of law and tomorrow’s… Read More »