By Jacob J Meagher*
According to Ministry of Justice statistics, in the County Court from July to September 2025 at least 59% of civil cases had an unrepresented party.[1] With civil legal aid an increasing improbability for even the most impecunious, and the 2026 Solicitor Guideline Hourly Rates having increased to £579 (plus vat) at the top end, one does wonder about the state of civil justice in England and Wales. The rule in Barton v Wright Hassall LLP [2018] UKSC 12 that there is no special treatment for litigants in person being rigorously applied,[2] this creates a plethora of problems and should give pause for thought.
Regularly we see qualified legal professionals erring when it comes to the CPR, and yet we also expect an LIP to rigorously comply; from a public policy perspective, this seems strange. As a society don’t we want to avoid recourse to self-help. A verbis ad verbera and all that. Shouldn’t civil justice be accessible to the citizenry?
Take our version of small claims court, the somewhat misleadingly called ‘Money Claims Online’. Practice direction 7C provides that one may claim a monetary remedy up to £100,000.00 via an online portal, albeit in practice one can only claim up to £10,000.00,[3] include particulars of claim limited to 1080 characters, and if no default judgment is issued the claim will be sent to a local County Court Hearing Centre. It is literally a way to file and serve a claim for a money remedy online, a truncated part 7, and respond with a preliminary defence. That said, the full gamut of the CPR applies. An online small claims court it is not, nor does anything other than the ‘claim’ take place online.
It seems odd that we have an effective and (somewhat) user friendly tribunal system originally designed for lay individuals in areas such as property/land, social welfare, employment, each with their own simplified rules of procedure, and importantly presumptions of no costs, and no fees for making interlocutory applications, yet for consumer law or small debt matters we do not have what many jurisdictions describe as a Disputes Tribunal or Small Claims Court.[4] One might contrast this with the bizarrely efficient ‘Single Justice Procedure’, where the state has worked out a way of convicting people of minor criminal offences, often by default, often without their knowledge.[5] Clearly, priorities are in order.
This barrister got into a dispute over a TV he recently purchased, a midlife crisis sized behemoth which adorns the wall displaying no picture and emitting no sound, now modern art. The facts are not disputed. The claim fee via Online Civil Money Claims was £455.00, the trial of 90 minutes is to be held in person at any time between 10am and 4pm at the local County Court (parties are required for the whole day), with a trial fee of £346.00 soon payable. As the Defendant wishes to update their defence, they have been advised to pay and submit an N244. Directions run four pages. In fairness to the retailer they complain that they need legal representation, and that court fees total 1/4th the cost of the TV. The process, and costs, are thoroughly convoluted for a consumer law dispute.
In a recent speech the Master of the Rolls posited “How can and should the fundamentals of modern justice be delivered more quickly, more efficiently and at more proportionate cost, but still justly in the forthcoming generation?”. He responded “One of the problems with providing a definitive answer to this question is that technology is moving very fast, and the thought leaders in our society have been struggling to keep up with its capabilities”, but that “we are not starting from scratch” as “In civil, family and tribunals justice, we are already establishing a digital justice system under the auspices of the Online Procedure Rules Committee.”[6] Hurrah for the OPRC! I am less convinced; I am also not in the ‘forthcoming generation’. In my humble opinion, a functioning civil court accessible to the citizenry has very little to do with “AI” (I dare not comment on its drafting), but much more to do with being able to pay court fees online (HMCTS will occasionally accept credit cards over the phone), mandating service via email, and getting the basics rights – not shooting for the next century. Now that there is court ordered mediation, it might be optimal to order/require parties to engage in verbal dialogue once a month. Interminable correspondence is great for revenue, but not for resolving matters or for CPR 1.1.
Current joint guidance issued by the Bar Council, the Law Society, and Cilex on ‘Litigants in Person: Guidelines for lawyers’[7] notes that “you are under no obligation to help a LiP to run their case or to take any action on a LiP behalf. Moreover, you should be aware that doing so you might, depending on the circumstances, be failing in your duties to your own client.”[8] Indeed, there appears to be a recent trend of hostility and gamesmanship towards LIP’s, some of which clearly crosses the ethical line.[9] The most courts appear to do is to order the represented party to take charge of bundling and to theoretically comply with the overriding objective. Albeit judgments as to how CPR 1.1 applies to LIP’s are thin on the ground.
Cognate jurisdictions treat the responsibility of Counsel towards LIPs somewhat differently than in England & Wales. In New Zealand, the 2008 Conduct and Client Care Rules mandate that Counsel must assist the court and not take unfair advantage of a self-represented opponents lack of knowledge. Rule 13.10 prohibits misleading the court or failing to correct a misleading statement, Rule 13.4 requires counsel to ensure that that the court is properly informed of the relevant law and procedural position. If an LIP misunderstands a point of law, fact or procedure that is material to the court’s determination, Counsel must assist the court by clarifying the correct position. This is about assisting the court not the litigant, it is a procedural obligation regarding ones’ primary duty. The obligation is higher if representing a public sector authority, in Australia the model litigant rule comes into play, something yet to catch on here.
What can practitioners conclude from all of this?
The incidence of LIP’s will continue to increase, there is no suggestion that the current state of the civil court system will improve, nor will court fees decrease. While the introduction of mandatory mediation has been a welcome event, it certainly hasn’t diverted a significant proportion of cases away from the courts. An LIP isn’t going to respond positively to mediation if an AI bot tells them they have a very strong claim. Constant ode’s to how AI will vastly improve the justice system are frankly absurd, the underlying civil stock is crumbling. Regarding the Government’s moves to bring in ‘Immigration Adjudicators’ (which is odd as immigration Tribunal Judges were originally Immigration Adjudicators)[10] one does wonder about access to civil justice and whether capacity could be unlocked if a true online Disputes Tribunal and Disputes Adjudicators could be introduced for disputes pertaining to debt and property under £50,00.00.[11] If something does not change, and if there is no access to civil justice, then I fear that people will simply resolve disputes amongst themselves, not in a good way, and not by using AI.
* Jacob J Meagher Barrister (E&W, IE, AU, NZ, AIFC) and Mediator, 1EC Barristers, jmeagher@1ec.co.uk
[1] See the following, no compensative set of statistics is available for the High Court: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-justice-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2025/civil-justice-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2025?utm_source=chatgpt.com#defences-including-legal-representation-and-trials (accessed 10.02.26)
[2] See also; HHJ Matthews in Reynard v Fox [2018] EWHC 443 (Ch); Jones v Longley & Ors [2016] EWHC 1309 (Ch); and more recently HHJ Matthews in John Kenneth Greenwood & Anor v Ronald Patrick Pringle [2024] EWHC 84 (Ch).
[3] See PD 51R – Online Civil Money Clams Pilot.
[4] See the New Zealand Disputes Tribunal as an example: https://disputestribunal.govt.nz/
[5] See The Telegraph 10.02.26 “Pensioner with dementia prosecuted for not insuring car”.
[6] Sir Geoffrey Voss, “Speech by The Master of the Rolls: Justice for all, justice for the accused” (5 February 2026, Old Bailey, London).
[7] Litigants in person: guidelines for lawyers (June 2015)
[8] Pg 6, citing Khudados v Hayden [2007] EWCA Civ 1316 [38]
[9] See SRA v Tomlinson [2026] SDT 12799-2024.
[10] Per the Immigration Appeals Act 1969, see also the Wilson Report of 1967.
[11] In NZ the Tribunal limit is the equivalent of around £30k, in New South Wales the limit is circa £52k.
