Early Steps for Organising and Settling a Case

by Christopher Enright

The Commonwealth, New South Wales and Victoria have enacted legislation that seeks to make civil litigation less costly and less time consuming. The thrust of these provisions is to impose requirements that litigants must satisfy early in the proceedings. Put broadly, parties must take proper steps that attempt to define the issues and to settle the case.

The legislation makes broad indications as to what constitutes taking these steps, but leaves it to lawyers and their clients to devise a more detailed approach. The purpose of this book is to help lawyer to devise this more detailed approach. To this end the book does the following:

• It describes the legislative framework for these provisions for the Commonwealth, New South Wales and Victoria.
• It describes basic skills with particular emphasis on the skills of organising law and organising litigation since these are central to the suggested ways that this book proposes for taking the required steps in a proper manner.
• It describes ways of taking these steps. These ways of taking the steps are designed to satisfy the legislative requirements. At the same time they provide benefits since they reduce the effort, cost and delay in litigating for a client. Moreover, these benefits continue in the later conduct of the case should the plaintiff resort to litigate the case.

186 pages softcover

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About the Author
Christopher Enright is a chartered accountant, barrister and solicitor. He has lectured in law at several universities. He specialises in legal method.