Commercial Dispute Resolution - UK News

The final report of Lord Justice Briggs' LJ's Civil Courts Structure Review was published on 27 July 2016.  Lord Justice Briggs identifies five main weaknesses of the civil courts structure, namely:

• Lack of adequate access to justice due to excessive costs expenditure / risk and the "lawyerish culture and procedure of the civil courts".He recommends the introduction of an online court by 2020 for claims up to £25,000 and extension of fixed costs.
• Inefficiencies from the "continuing tyranny of paper" coupled with the use of obsolete and inadequate IT facilities in most of the civil courts.To resolve this, Briggs proposes the "digitisation of all the processes" of the civil courts which will eventually be paperless.