Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General, was due to deliver the keynote address at last month’s Legal Week Litigation Forum in London. In the 
event, Debevoise & Plimpton’s European head of litigation was called away on international business. But he subsequently recorded his reflections on litigation post-credit crunch in Legal Week’s Soho recording studios. Here’s an edited extract of his speech:
“We already have been living for over a year with the subprime crisis. This was particularly characterised by the massive write downs by the leading financial institutions. Yet there was surprisingly little evidence of litigation emerging from these events. There were some cases of contracts which were affected by the credit crisis where litigation was threatened or talked about – we in my firm indeed were involved with some. But, despite the anecdotal stories, very little seemed actually to turn into active litigation and certainly not the explosion of litigation some UK practitioners might have envisaged.
