Ten years on it is time to assess his achievements from the point of view of the intended beneficiaries, the litigants,
most of them litigants in person.
Not exact matches
We are located
in Midtown just south
of Overton Square
in Memphis, Tennessee, but we have helped injured
persons and other
litigants throughout
most of West Tennessee, including Shelby, Tipton, Fayette, Lauderdale, Haywood, and Madison Counties.
While shedding further light on an aspect
of the law seldom visited, highlighting the risks involved
in filing documents
in a manner which can not be tracked / traced and illustrating the types
of complication with which the courts will increasingly have to deal with ever more
litigants in person, the case is perhaps
most striking for what it highlights about the current fault - based divorce system.
Nearly one quarter
of the 85 leading family lawyers taking part
in the survey said their
most pressing issue was
litigants in person, which are increasingly common due to cuts
in legal aid and public funding for advice centres.
Piecemeal decision - making on a case - by - case basis and
in terms not accessible to
most litigants in persons is surely not the way to administer a family — or any — system
of justice.
Actually, two
of the
most striking things about the current situation seem to me (by comparison with recent history) the convergence
of interest by
people and institutions traditionally separate within jurisdictions (e.g. inhabiting the worlds
of PLE, legal aid, self represented
litigants) and the degree
of international linking helped by HiiL's entrepreneurialism (you can go to few countries
in the world and not find that they have been there the week before) but also exampled by links the licensing
of material from the Justice Education Society
of British Columbia by California courts.
One can understand the frustration
of judges when bundles are badly prepared / late / missing, but save
in the
most affluent
of cases the preparation
of bundles will often be onerous and time - consuming particularly
in cases involving
litigants in person (where the respondent, if legally represented, now has to prepare the bundle if the applicant is unrepresented).
It recognized that public interest
litigants are crucial to realizing the Charter's democratic potential because they can address the systemic impacts
of the law on the
most vulnerable
people in a way that isn't possible
in individual litigation.
LexisNexis, the international legal technology company and publisher, provided one
of the
most interesting contributions to the Civil Justice Council's December forum
in London from its committee on
litigants in person.
And while some civil
litigants may be entitled to counsel
in certain jurisdictions,
in most of these cases,
people who can not afford a lawyer will be forced to go it alone.
Cuts to legal aid provision have led to an increasing number
of people appearing as
litigants in person, especially
in the family courts and
most particularly
in divorce cases.
Sir Robert Megarry, a noted English judge, once observed that the
most important
person in the court room with respect to the issue
of perception is «the
litigant who is going to lose.»
It is
in my view the combination
of those two features, namely an application process which is
in accessible to
most LIPs [
litigants in person] and the absence
of an economic business model sufficient to encourage lawyers to apply on their behalf, which makes the ECF scheme inherently defective and therefore unfair.....
I understand from Justice Stanley Sherr, a brilliant jurist and one
of the
people most responsible for creating and promoting this process, that these trials are popular among the bar, as they are involved
in designing the hearing and it gives their clients greater certainty as to cost and date
of resolution, and among
litigants, as their cases are heard much more quickly at far less cost.