Janna Purdie on how practitioners can make life easier for themselves in front of the judiciary
Court etiquette - Jacobs v Skidmore Owings [2008] All ER (D) 258 (Nov)
All practitioners will have encountered difficulties in providing sensible time estimates to the courts for hearings. However, just because it can be difficult or the estimate fluctuates over time does not mean that the requirement to inform the court can be ignored.
While failures to advise the court of changes to time estimates may come from a fear that the court will adjourn the application, this sort of behaviour disrupts the rest of the court service and is discourteous. Judges will invariably try to accommodate applications which have been listed.
In Jacobs v Skidmore, the time estimate of two hours, when the application took three days, was obviously inadequate and was criticised by Mr Justice Coulson. While the judge acknowledged that it is sometimes difficult for parties to agree a reasonable time estimate at the time of making the application, the adequacy of the time estimate should be
