In the third instalment of his series on access to justice and digital technologies, Roger Smith asks whether the Lord Chancellor is tilting his hat at high-fee international commercial work at the expense of smaller domestic claims
Smith writes that the government is courting oligarchs while closing magistrates’ courts. He says this raises five separate issues, which he goes on to explain. For example, ‘commendable attempts to provide special additional services like digital assistance for those who need them’ have been ‘half-hearted’.
He writes: ‘You can bet your bottom dollar that, untrammelled by prior clear objectives, beset by the impact of COVID (with which, in fact, the partially completed digitalisation programme provided some much-appreciated assistance), the courts will be squeezed for more savings.’
