Geoffrey Bindman reflects on the report of his old office junior
Sir Rupert Jackson’s report is a tour de force. I am proud that, as a student, the young Rupert spent some time in a dogsbody capacity in my office. I’d like to think that the spark which fired his understanding of our branch of the profession was lit during this short preamble to his distinguished career.
Big report
The two parts of his report fill no less than 1,200 pages, comparable to the length of War and Peace, which took Tolstoy more than seven years to complete. To read the whole of it might require—as Proust’s brother said of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu—a long illness or a broken leg.
Jackson had a team of helpers who doubtless collected the mass of factual material which the report contains but the consistent style bears the stamp of a single directing mind. The analysis is lucid and the programme of reform which the report recommends may well be to produce significant savings in the overall cost of civil litigation.
