ABSTRACT
One important effect of the introduction of the procedure for filing and exchanging witness statements, as explained by Lord Woolf MR in McPhilemy v Times Newspapers Ltd,3 is that the need for extensive pleadings should be reduced. Once documents have been disclosed and witness statements exchanged, the details of the nature of a case should become clear and at that stage the pleadings ‘will frequently become of only historical interest . . . Unless there is some obvious purpose to be served by fighting over the precise terms of a pleading, contests over their terms are to be discouraged’.4
