May 2008

LORD GILL'S REVIEW

Response by Lawford Kidd Solicitors, 12 Hill Street, Edinburgh

To Scottish Civil Courts Review Consultation Paper

26/03/2008

The Firm

Lawford Kidd is a Specialist Personal Injury Practice.  The core of our work is referred and funded by major Trade Unions.  This work is not funded on a speculative basis (contrary to the statement at page 21 of the Consultation Paper at paragraph 3.21).

The firm was accredited by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) in 2006, being the first Scottish firm to receive such an accreditation.  The firm plays an active part in APIL, MASS (the Motor Accident Solicitors Society) and is also represented on the Law Society Civil Justice Committee.

The firm has a strict client service policy seeking to ensure that all communications to clients are set out in plain and understandable terms.  Each client, at the commencement of the claims process, is issued with a printed brochure setting out in detail the claims process, the financial basis on which any claim is settled and an outline of the court process.  The brochure is also available on the firm website.

The firm is ranked third in the list of pursuers’ agents raising actions for personal injury in the Court of Session.

The firm considers that access to civil justice in a modern Scotland is well served by the Court of Session and would seek to retain and improve the Court of Session as the principal venue for personal injury litigation in Scotland.  “The judicial function is first and foremost to do justice between the parties in the instant case.  But in the Supreme Civil Court it is also part of the judicial function to interpret and declare the law, to set useful precedents and, in new circumstances, to promote the development of legal principles imaginatively”.

Lord Gill made the above remark to the annual conference of the Law Society in March 1995.  It is our position that in relation to personal injury law the Court of Session is providing the above function in an exemplary and efficient manner and any attempt to diminish the standing of the Court of Session by removing the bulk of personal injury cases or using the court purely for appeals would be a substantial and unwarranted limitation on the provision of civil justice to the Scottish public.  We will set out the reasons for our position in our following answers to the questions raised in the discussion paper.

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