If today’s litigators refuse to embrace change, they might find their own futures very uncertain, says Jonathan Lafferty
The strength of the English legal system is its adaptability to changes in society; as Lord Hope noted in Chartbrook Ltd v Persimmon Homes Ltd , ‘one of the strengths of the common law is that it can take a fresh look at itself so that it can keep pace with changing circumstances.’ But with so much unprecedented uncertainty in the justice system and broader society, how can litigation in England & Wales adapt to meet that uncertainty successfully? This article seeks to predict what factors will affect litigation in the next five years and what that will that mean for lawyers, judges and litigants themselves.
All quiet on Aldwych
An instructive start in determining how litigation will look in five years is to consider how litigation looked five years ago. Since then, the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) have gone through several dozen updates. One of the biggest changes since 2012 was the Jackson Reforms, implemented in April 2013. However, Lord Justice Jackson first
