… and I haven’t read anything that changes my predictions from those in my last blog.

I realise they were hardly in the Nostradamus league but the telling points about the costs management and detailed assessment recommendations are that (apart from pre-action costs management) they do not require primary legislation to be put into effect.  Hence I wouldn’t bet against their adoption.

I particularly liked the description of current bills of costs as “turgid” (which has immediately become my word of the week). 

Clearly (as everyone can now see) there is far more to the issue about forms of bills and estimates than mere style.  

Where I would blow Ellis Grant’s own trumpet is in the context of the recommendations for greater economy in presentation of points of dispute and replies.  We hope by our good management rather than than luck, the points of dispute and replies drafted by our firm have long been consistent with the brevity and lack of repetition now urged by Lord Justice Jackson.

As to the rest of the report I couldn’t hope to say anything intelligent or useful about it in the early hours of this Friday morning.  My necessarily superficial impression at this early stage is that this, as my American friends might say, is a game-changer.

My late father (who spent most of his working life at Ford Motor Co) used to tell me of the Damascene conversion in management style and manufacturing process brought about after Ford’s top brass studied the Japanese car industry in the 1970′s.  The acronym “AJ” was coined meaning “After Japan” and was employed widely to signify disruptive but necessary change.  

In litigation costs we now have our own “AJ”.  And as Bob Dylan once wrote “Your old road is rapidly agin’. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand”.  No prizes for guessing the next line.

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