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NLJ this week: How much can we rely on a witness’s memory?

07 March 2025
Issue: 8107 / Categories: Legal News , Procedure & practice , Dispute resolution
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Memory is fallible, so how should litigation lawyers be aware of this when preparing witness statements? Mary Young, partner, and Laurence Clarke, senior associate, in the dispute resolution team at Kingsley Napley, discuss the unreliability of memory and court procedure rules introduced nearly four years ago on record-keeping and preparation of witness statements.

One problem, as they explain, is that ‘through the process of remembering or recalling events, an individual can change or edit their own recollection’.

Young and Clarke write: ‘The difficulty for a judge is that they may be faced with two witnesses who give different accounts of the same events, while at the same time both being entirely honest and fully believing that the evidence they give is accurate.’ 

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Myers & Co—Jen Goodwin

Myers & Co—Jen Goodwin

Head of corporate promoted to director

Boies Schiller Flexner—Lindsay Reimschussel

Boies Schiller Flexner—Lindsay Reimschussel

Firm strengthens international arbitration team with key London hire

Corker Binning—Priya Dave

Corker Binning—Priya Dave

FCA contentious financial regulation lawyer joins the team as of counsel

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Ian Gascoigne of LexisNexis dissects the uneasy balance between open justice and confidentiality in England’s civil courts, in this week's NLJ. From public hearings to super-injunctions, he identifies five tiers of privacy—from fully open proceedings to entirely secret ones—showing how a patchwork of exceptions has evolved without clear design
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