The decision by the House of Lords in Moy v Pettman Smith [2005] has been widely welcomed by barristers and solicitors as restoring a common-sense approach to the question of how much of their reasoning a lawyer must explain to a client when giving advice on settlement at the door of the Court.
In that sense, the decision confirms the law to be what most practitioners thought it was before the Court of Appeal intervened. However, in practice the decision is likely to have at least equal significance in relation to the issue of how the interests of justice should be balanced against adherence to procedural orders and time limits.
