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20 February 2026 / Stephen Gold
Issue: 8150 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice , Civil way , CPR , Costs , Nuisance
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Civil way: 20 February 2026

How about a court survey?; cross on an interlocutory; mental health care shake-up; latest on cat poo; liability-only Pt 36 offers.

SURVEYING THE SITUATION

The Ministry of Justice hoped for a large-scale survey of county court users, so they commissioned Ipsos UK to conduct a study on the feasibility of such a survey. What do you know?! A pilot survey and lots of exploratory work later, Ipsos has now advised in a 137-page report that a survey is feasible. Pilot interviewees, asked how satisfied or dissatisfied they were with their experience of court services, were offered the choice of very satisfied, fairly satisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, fairly dissatisfied and very dissatisfied. Doubtlessly with Ricky Gervais’s The Office appraisal of Keith in mind, interviewers were directed not to read out the options of ‘don’t know’ and ‘prefer not to say’. One can expect the report to be carefully scrutinised in committee.


NOT QUITE A CERT

The civil certificate of service in form

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys senior leadership appointments

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths strengthens London Construction and Engineering practice with two strategic senior hires

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins announces strategic hire to deepen skills base in the social business sector

NEWS
Existing defamation law can respond to AI ‘hallucinations’, but allocating responsibility will prove harder where outputs reach users without human intervention
The High Court has upheld a rare successful serious-irregularity challenge after an arbitrator relied on an implied term neither party had advanced
Thirty years after The Future of Law shook a profession still using fax machines, its central forecast looks increasingly less like prophecy and more like description
More than 100 teams from the legal and financial services sectors competed in five sports at the 51st Law Society RFC Festival of Sport earlier this month
Part-time status need only be an effective cause of less favourable treatment, rather than the sole cause, the Supreme Court has held in Augustine v Data Cars
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