ABSTRACT
Active case management includes: ‘dealing with the case without the parties needing to attend at court’ (r 1.4(j)) and ‘making use of technology’ (r 1.4(k)).35 The new rules provide a number of options, apart from an oral hearing, for dealing with an application. As well as dealing with the application without the expense of an oral hearing, the CPR now also makes provision for telephone and video conferencing. Lord Woolf envisaged video and telephone conferencing as vital tools for case management.36 He was not proposing that telephone conferencing would replace existing hearings or meetings, but instead that it would encourage greater, proactive communication where, in the past, there would have been silence.37
