The first day of December brought an early Christmas present for legal aid lawyers as justice secretary Kenneth Clarke announced that he would be delaying the legal aid reforms contained in his Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.

The Ministry of Justice said the delay would give time for the profession to adjust to other changes, including alternative business structures and the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. But will the government also delay the Jackson reforms to civil justice contained in the bill? The official answer is no; the MoJ said last week that there were ‘no changes to the timetable for implementation of civil costs reform’.

Isn’t this crazy?

Jackson has said time and again that his reforms must be implemented as a package; they cannot be phased in bit by bit. But it will require a huge number of new rules to achieve this. New rules will be needed to introduce qualified one-way costs shifting in personal injury, which will turn the fundamentals of costs liability on their head. They will be needed to introduce damages-based agreements in commercial litigation, allowing commercial litigators to take a slice of damages for the first time (with the level of any cap to be set in the implementing rules).

There will also be new rules for assessing costs, for managing cases (and judges will need to be trained in these), not to mention changes to disclosure and expert witness rules. All of these will have important ramifications for those using the courts, and they must be brought in with care.

To say that the Civil Procedure Rules Committee (CPRC) has got its work cut out would be something of an understatement. So why does the government seem determined to press on with implementation at such break-neck speed? Isn’t it more important that it’s done right, than done quickly?

In truth, it seems that many of those involved in the Jackson implementation regard October as a ‘public’ date, but there is creeping acceptance that, in reality, it has little chance of being met. Indeed, one MoJ official, when outlining the CPRC’s timetable of work in relation to the reforms, described October as a ‘loose’ date, telling me that if the committee cannot meet this date, ‘it is likely to move to 6 April 2013'.

If Jackson’s changes will not be coming into effect until April 2013, that is wholly understandable given the amount of work to be done. But we need to be open about this now.

After all, many law firms, after-the-event insurers and others will be hit pretty hard by these reforms. If they are to stand a fair chance of adapting their businesses to survive, they at least need to know when the new rules are actually going to bite.

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