Diane Parker takes issue with the unintended consequences of the Jackson reforms
In December last year NLJ published my article, (A return to the nursery), in which I likened the “Jackson reforms” to creating nannies out of the court system and treating its users, claimants, defendants and their lawyers as Edwardian schoolchildren. I now realise that analogy was wrong, as it conjures up an environment of safety and security for those who play by the rules, when the reality appears to be very different.
There have always been “nasty” defendants, but, since the Woolf reforms, they have been in the minority. I believe that those who used the “nastiness” to gain advantage were given short shrift by the courts in the Woolf-era of co-operation leaving only a core of genuinely unpleasant individuals who knew no other way to behave. There have always been judges, who would take delight in criticising you in front of your clients or opponents, but again they were in a minority and could be worked around. Like the recent
