RSPB, Friends of the Earth & Client Earth v. Secretary of State for Justice [2017] EWHC 2309 (Admin), 15 September 2017, Dove J – judgment here

In my March 2017 post here, I explained that amendments to the costs rules for public law environmental claims threatened to undo much of the certainty that those rules had achieved since 2013. Between 2013 and February 2017, if you, an individual, had an environmental judicial review, then you could pretty much guarantee that your liability to the other side’s costs would be capped at £5,000 (£10,000 for companies) if you lost, and your recovery of your own costs would be limited to £35,000 if you won. In this way, the rules sought to avoid the cost of such claims becoming prohibitively expensive and thus in breach of Art.9(4) of the Aarhus Convention.

The most worrying element in the February 2017 amendments was a new CPR 45.44  giving the courts a broad discretion to vary those amounts, apparently at any time. This seemed like an open invitation to the defendants to try to do this, aided by the financial information which claimants are now obliged to provide. It was truly regressive, taking us back to the days when you spent many thousands of pounds arguing about a protective costs order which was intended to save money.

In my March post, I explained that the new rules were being challenged by NGOs, and Friday’s judgment is the upshot of this challenge.

It is essentially a success for the NGOs.

Continue reading →

There are a few places remaining for 1 Crown Office Row’s high-level seminar this Monday 11 September. The event is aimed at solicitors and people associated with NGOs. We also have a limited number of student places which will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Email events@1cor.com to reserve your place.

Details:

11th September 2017, 5 – 8pm

Programme:

5 – 5.50pm Panel Discussion chaired by Mrs Justice Whipple.

Speakers will include: Marina Wheeler QC, Jeremy Hyam QC, Shaheen Rahman QC, Martin Downs and Adam Wagner.

6 – 6.40pm Breakout sessions – Law and Practice

(i) Public Powers and Private Lives in the Information Age – Amelia Walker

(ii) Inquests and Article 2 – Rachel Marcus, Caroline Cross, Peter Skelton

(iii) Unlawful detention – Suzanne Lambert, Alasdair Henderson, David Manknell

6.45pm Concluding Session – Questions and Summing Up.

Chaired by Mrs Justice Whipple

7pm Drinks Reception

Hosted by the speakers and 1COR Members.

Richard Susskind, IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice, has spent many years looking into the future of the law. In a fascinating podcast paving the way for his new book The Future of the Professions and the updated Tomorrow’s Lawyers, he discusses with OUP’s George Miller the new world of technological advancements in the day to day management of dispute resolution. We have taken the liberty of summarising the podcast here and posting a link to the interview at the end of this post. 

Susskind finds, in comparison with the rest of the English speaking world, that the legal institutions of the UK are in some sort of denial about the march of AI. He maintains that the legal world will change more in twenty years than it has in the past two centuries. If we want to improve access to justice in our society, the answer is in technology. But the law schools have not caught up with this idea.

How do we work out what to do in the face of irreversible and inevitable change in the law? Susskind acknowledges that most people want to pay less for legal services, for something that is less complicated, less combative. It’s not that there’s less legal work to do, there’s more legal work to do, but it’s under cost pressure.

The twenties will be the big decade of change. The age of denial ended in 2016; leaders in law are no longer saying the legal world is going to go back to what it was in 2004-6. But the period from 2016 – 2020 is the area of resourcing, put bluntly, finding cheaper people to do the work by outsourcing, as manufacturing did years ago. Once we’re into the twenties, we’ve arrived in an area Susskind calls the decade of disruption. The challenge to lawyers will be to provide not only one to one services in the traditional way, but to work on systems that one day will replace us. The trusted advisor concept is not fundamental to the legal service. That was limited to the print world. The future of the professions is to imagine other ways in which these problems must be sorted out. When a client has a problem, and they say they want a trusted advisor, what they really want  is access to reliable expertise, and this is being worked on in the field of AI. Our technology is becoming more and more capable. Future clients will happily go for that even if they lose the surrounding aura or trappings of a traditional legal advisor. Continue reading →