New court keeps England competitive

The legal profession needs to drop its use of ‘unintelligible and incomprehensible names and titles’ in order to provide a world-class service in the face of increasing competition from abroad, a senior judge has said.

Launching the Business and Property Courts in Bristol this week along with the Lord Chief Justice and other dignitaries, Sir Geoffrey Vos, Chancellor of the High Court, emphasised the importance of judges and lawyers in demonstrating the high quality of English law and courts as the UK prepares for Brexit.

‘We need to reach out to the users of these courts and to national and international business generally, so as to ensure that they understand what we are offering in terms of business and commercial litigation here in England and Wales,’ Sir Geoffrey said.

‘Lawyers have, I am afraid, always rather liked using words that nobody else can understand. We have tried, unsuccessfully, for more than 200 years to explain to the business community what “Chancery” means. Since that word is still very widely misunderstood, I took the view that it was time to quit trying.’ Consequently, ‘Mercantile’ judges had been renamed ‘Circuit Commercial judges’ and the ‘Mercantile Court’ had become the ‘Circuit Commercial Court’.

The Business and Property Courts launched in London in July 2017 and have since launched at regional centres in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Cardiff. Launches in Newcastle and Liverpool will take place in the coming weeks.

Sir Geoffrey told the Bristol gathering that a ‘critical mass of judges’ would be created in each regional centre, so that ‘no case will ever to be too big to be tried in the regions’.

‘Our UK jurisdictions have for some years faced increasing competition from other jurisdictions in Europe and beyond,' he said. 

‘In the last year, business or commercial courts that operate in the English language have been started or are about to be started in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Frankfurt. They would all very much like to attract the international work that we do in the B&PCs to use these new courts.’

Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice, said: ‘Barely a month goes by without a report of another jurisdiction establishing or considering whether to establish an English-speaking commercial court. And the question of venue becomes ever more competitive… The Business and Property Courts creation is our most recent innovation. It brings together judicial expertise in finance, business and markets, property, intellectual property, and technology and construction law. It offers an excellent forum for court-based dispute resolution.’