Index of movers & shakers
- The Aikens Report on Long Trials in the Commercial Court and the pilot scheme
- The Jackson Report: Review of Civil Litigation Costs
- The Sedona Principles
- The Commercial Litigators’ Forum (CLF)
- The LiST Group
The Aikens Report on Long Trials in the Commercial Court and the pilot scheme.
The contents of this report need not concern us here save to say that as a result of the report, the courts introduced a pilot scheme in the Commercial Court one of the results of which is the new Electronic Working scheme which came into effect on April 10th 2010 (see above). It also gave rise to one of the best warning shots across the bows of profligate litigators. Speaking at a meeting of the Commercial Litigators Forum in 2008, Mrs Justice Gloster said words to the effect that “the days of filling my court with rows of lever arch files are over”.
The Jackson Report: Review of Civil Litigation Costs.
Summary of key recommendations:
blog.millnet.co.uk/index.php/2010/01/jackson-key-recommendations/
PDF:
www.judiciary.gov.uk/about_judiciary/cost-review/jan2010/final-report-140110.pdf
The Jackson report did not deal with commercial litigation as such. Jackson had seen and approved the ESI questionnaire and the proposed draft PD on electronic disclosure and professed himself satisfied that reforms in this area were satisfactory provided that the proposed changes were implemented.
The Sedona Principles
The Sedona Conference is a research and educational institute dedicated to the study of law and policy in a number of areas including complex litigation. The Sedona Guidelines and the Sedona Principles are among the foremost thought leadership pieces in the field of e-disclosure.
The Commercial Litigators’ Forum (CLF)
www.commerciallitigatorsforum.com
The CLF was established in July 2002 by a number of the leading dispute resolution law firms to promote informal discussion of, and to promulgate initiatives in, dispute resolution related issues affecting the legal profession and the court system.
This description is taken from the notes at the foot of the first page of one of the CLF’s most well known publications, being a paper on Electronic Disclosure authored by Mark Humphries, then a leading litigation lawyer at Linklaters and now head of his own Bristol based litigation firm, Neil Mirchandani who is still a litigation partner at Lovells and Sanjay Bandhari, then a senior litigation associate at Baker & Mackenzie and now Head of e-disclosure at Ernst & Young.
The CLF has a website at www.commerciallitigatorsforum.com and the group has representatives of all the major litigation practices in the country participating in its activities.
The LiST Group
The Litigation Support Technology Group was formed in 2003 by a group of litigation support professionals with the aim of encouraging and developing uniformity of approach to the use of technology in litigation and alternative dispute resolution. Its membership comprises approximately 40 law firms and other commercial organisations with an interest in litigation support.
Some of their best pieces of work are the Data Exchange Protocol (Parts 1 and 2) and the draft technology questionnaire and Practice Direction produced in 2004.
PDF: LiST Data Exchange Protocol Part 1 of 2: Disclosure Documents
PDF: LiST Data Exchange Protocol Part 2 of 2: Disclosure Data