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01 February 2013 / Chris Gutteridge
Issue: 7546 / Categories: Features , Personal injury
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The art of persuasion

Technology & expert advocacy can achieve the best persuasive effect from a schedule of loss, explains Chris Gutteridge

In personal injury litigation, the balance of probabilities is king and the art of persuasion can secure you the keys to the kingdom. As Baroness Hale put it in Gregg v Scott [2005] UKHL 2 “more likely than not” is a matter of persuasion, not of proof.

There is a particular emphasis on the importance of persuasion in litigation involving an injury which has changed the course of a claimant’s future working life or, in the case of a catastrophic injury, brought that working life to a premature end. In these cases, the trial judge is asked to predict the future, sometimes with very little to go on. How is a court to decide whether an injured infant would have become a banker or a bin collector? Whether an injured graduate would have excelled or floundered? The findings of fact made by a judge faced with such a dilemma can make hundreds of thousands of

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The government will aim to pass legislation banning leasehold for new flats and capping ground rent, introducing non-compulsory digital ID and creating a ‘duty of candour’ for public servants (also known as the Hillsborough law) in the next Parliament

An Italian financier has lost his bid to block his Australian wife from filing divorce papers in England on the basis it was no longer her domicile of choice

Reforms to the disclosure regime in the business and property courts have not achieved their objectives, lawyers have warned
The Law Society has urged ministers to hold a public consultation on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the justice system as a whole
Ministers have proposed bringing inquest work under a single fee scheme for legal help and advocacy legal aid work
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