For nearly forty years, from the end of the 1940s, the primary form of litigation funding in England and Wales was civil legal aid. From the start of the 1980s, however, there has been a steady withdrawal from that model. Successive governments have reduced the amount of public funds committed to civil legal aid, while also removing significant areas of law from its scope. In tandem with the winnowing away of legal aid has been the promotion of a number of forms of private litigation funding through statutory reform and common law developments. One form of funding has not, however, been subject to promotion by either the government or the judiciary: before-the-event legal expenses insurance. This article looks at the potential role that such legal expenses insurance could have as the primary form of litigation funding in the future.

The right to a fair trial under Article 6 ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) provides one of the procedural guarantees of access to justice. One of the elements on which access to justice under Article 6 ECHR depends is party resources. The concern for equality of arms is that both parties should be able to effectively argue their case before a court, not being impeded by a lack of resources that undermines the tools of their pleading. Such an equality is subject to case-specific analysis. The Lawrence ruling is a ruling on the compatibility of the regime of recoverability of conditional fee agreement (CFA) additional liabilities under the Access to Justice Act 1999 with Article 6 ECHR. The majority in the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) ruled, under a proportionality test, that there was no infringement of Article 6 ECHR because the introduction of the recoverability of CFA additional liabilities was a necessary measure for England to adopt in the pursuit of access to justice under its margin of appreciation. In this article, I will argue that a more holistic view of the procedural guarantees provided for by Article 6 ECHR is called for to properly assess its infringement, considering mainly the principle of equality of arms. The aim of this article is, therefore, to investigate how the principle of equality of arms should have informed the UKSC’s decision in Lawrence.

Costs are a severe barrier to access to justice in Ireland. Taxpayer support for litigation is virtually non-existent and contingency fees are not permitted. Lawyers may take cases on a speculative ‘no foal no fee’ basis but two decisions of the supreme court in recent years invalidated both direct third-party funding of another’s lawsuit (Persona Digital Telephony v. Minister for Public Enterprise [2017] IESC 27) and the assignment of a legal claim to a third-party (SPV Osus Ltd v. Minister for Public Enterprise [2018] IESC 44). This paper reviews these two decisions and challenges the supreme court’s reliance on the ancient common law principles of maintenance and champerty. This is significantly out of line with the approach of senior courts in other common law jurisdictions. The access to justice problem was acknowledged by the judges and the Irish Law Reform Commission is studying the issue. With the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, Ireland has been presented with the opportunity to become a major common law ‘hub’ for legal services. Litigation funding would assist it to embrace this opportunity. The paper also takes a brief look at third-party costs orders in Ireland, used only in cases where altruistic funders provide funding for litigation. The paper’s basic message is that, subject to appropriate regulation, third-party litigation funding should become lawful in Ireland.

Litigation funding has become synonymous with class action litigation in Australia with third-party funders being a key source of financing. This article addresses the rise and regulation of litigation funding in Australia through three pathways: judicial oversight of litigation funding, government regulation of litigation funding and competition from lawyers. Initially, litigation funding was subject to minimal regulation in an effort to promote access to justice. However, concerns about the size of profits made by funders which in turn impacted Australian businesses and reduced the compensation available for group members saw the adoption of a more detailed and restrictive regulatory approach. Further regulation has been proposed and criticised for hampering funding of class actions. This article concludes with a middle or compromise position that recommends a base level of regulation and empowers the courts to act as a check on excessive fees.

In determining the accessibility and affordability of the civil justice system, this article will evaluate the costs regime and litigation funding available in Cyprus in light of the recent proposed reforms to the civil procedure rules. At the time of writing, civil cases in Cyprus are ranked according to their value and governed by fixed costs rules depending on the scale of the claim. Litigation funding, such as legal aid, is available only if the civil case involves the infringement of human rights and is granted under specific circumstances. Furthermore, third-party funding and contingency fees are practically unheard of, as they remain unregulated by the Cypriot legislation. Third-party litigation funding has only recently been examined by the national courts albeit in the context of an application for the setting aside of an order enforcing a foreign judgment. Is the Cypriot civil justice system affordable and thus accessible? Does limited access to legal aid and third-party funding result in violation of the right to access to justice? Will the civil justice reform improve accessibility for litigants? A holistic answer will be achieved by drawing comparisons with costs and litigation funding practices in England and Wales, as well as in Germany, both of which are leading jurisdictions in Europe and especially influential owing to their geopolitical history with the island, representing the common law and civil law systems, respectively.

This article examines proposals to reduce the cost of American discovery. It focuses on recent proposals and rules amendments to shift the entire cost of discovery to the party requesting discovery and then examines the idea of mandatorily shifting discovery costs in all cases. The article identifies a number of potential flaws with mandatory cost shifting. It then evaluates several proposals that might achieve the same end with fewer side effects, finding that two of them deserve consideration and, ideally, real-world experimentation.

Singapore, a common law jurisdiction, recently implemented radical changes to its civil procedure regime in order to ensure affordability of the civil justice process. The reforms include the imposition of a duty on parties to consider alternative dispute resolution (ADR) before commencing and during legal proceedings and the empowerment of courts to order the parties to use ADR. This paper discusses the implications of increasing the justice system’s emphasis on the use of ADR with reference to Singapore’s civil justice reforms and comparable reforms in the United Kingdom. It demonstrates how the historical inclusion of ADR in the justice system has shaped the concept of access to justice, resulting in an emphasis not only on cost-effective justice but also on tailoring the characteristics of each case to the appropriate dispute resolution process. An excessive association of ADR with cost savings will thus neglect other significant dimensions of access to justice. The paper argues that the question of whether ADR is an appropriate process for each dispute assumes greater complexity as both the parties and the court have to engage in detailed cost-benefit analyses to determine whether any refusal to attempt ADR or order to use ADR is justified. Cost concerns also have to be delicately balanced with other factors relevant to determining the appropriate dispute resolution process. The author proposes adopting a more nuanced approach that does not deem mediation as automatically decreasing the overall cost of justice and recognises the importance of encouraging appropriate dispute resolution.

Virtually all major jurisdictions worldwide, including those in Europe, have been facing constrained budgets in civil justice and increasing litigation volume, delays, complexity and costs in the last few decades. This makes it difficult, or impossible, for certain individuals and entities to pursue meritorious claims, be it individually or collectively, posing a significant challenge to access to justice. With third-party funding (TPF) of litigation frequently touted as a promising private funding solution to this problem, this article explores the question of how and why the proliferation of TPF has been viewed with a considerable degree of caution in Europe, and questions to what extent this caution is warranted. The scale of the civil justice crisis in Europe, the shift from public to private funding and the purported benefits of TPF are first briefly investigated. The article then proceeds to critically examine, including from a law-and-economics perspective, the main sources of concern leading to the scepticism shown towards TPF in Europe, which is still largely unregulated. These sources are the commodification of justice, conflicts of interest and funder capital inadequacy. Particular reference is made to the regulatory frameworks of the jurisdictions of England and Wales, the Netherlands and Germany in Europe, and at the European Union level, to the Representative Actions Directive. It concludes by restating the potential benefits and complexity of this industry and the importance of distinguishing and analysing the arguments most commonly raised against it in the literature, policy and jurisprudence.

Affordable and timely judicial proceedings by independent courts are essential for an effective justice system. They are also a precondition for the protection of the rule of law in the EU and for an integrated internal market. Among the tools the European Commission adopts in this field, the EU Justice Scoreboard is key to understanding the empirical basis of the European judicial policies. Created in 2013, it provides annual data on efficiency, quality and independence of member states’ courts. The Scoreboard considers costly judicial proceedings as an obstacle to access to justice. It accordingly benchmarks member states’ performance with various indicators. In the Commission’s view, different national legal traditions should not prevent comparative assessment of member state judicial systems. However, the idiosyncrasies of national systems and the heterogeneity of national judicial statistics inevitably affect this empirical monitoring exercise. A closer look at the Scoreboard data shows that adjudication costs cannot be evaluated through quantitative metrics without contextualisation. This article focuses on the Scoreboard data on judicial costs, from both the supply and the demand side of judicial services. It critically reviews the fact-finding process that supports the preparation of the Scoreboard as well as the data this document displays. In so doing, it tests whether the Scoreboard conveys reliable and comparable information. This analysis is all the more important as the Scoreboard often supports academic analyses on the performance of justice and policy proposals by regulators and lawmakers.