The fundamental aim of the Woolf reforms was to make the dispute resolution process quicker and cheaper. According to the results of Legal Week’s dispute resolution survey, they have been half successful.
Asked to rank whether costs had increased or decreased since the introduction of civil procedure rules (CPR), on a scale of one to five (one being a substantial decrease, three being no change, etc), respondents, which ranged from magic circle practices to regional firms to niche practices, came up with an average score of 3.21. This would suggest that the overall cost of dispute resolution has remained largely static, or even slightly increased.
Driving down cost
The CPR contain a number of measures aimed at driving down the cost of litigation, not least the prospect of wasted costs orders and the concept of ‘proportionality’. Yet much of the work required to fulfil these aims means that costs are racked up before issuing proceedings, so the costs burden is incurred at a far earlier stage of the process than before the CPR were introduced.
And the overall average figure of 3.21 covers the resolution of all cases, whether they are pursued through litigation, arbitration or alternative forms of dispute resolution. While the Woolf reforms have generally led to the earlier settlement of cases, for those that do follow the traditional litigation route the costs have actually increased quite substantially, due to the front-loading that the courts’ case management powers now require.
“Overall costs have fallen because people
are looking for earlier exits now,” says CMS Cameron McKenna’s head of litigation, Tim Hardy. “But while cases may settle sooner, they actually incur more costs. You used to incur most of the costs at a later stage of a case; now you incur costs at the outset and at the later stages. The case management powers that the courts have under the CPR may be beneficial to the overall conduct of the case, but they have not helped to reduce costs.”
