ABSTRACT
Civil justice is fundamentally a debate between individuals. The person bringing the civil law claim is deemed the ‘claimant’ and the person defending the claim is called the ‘defendant’. In English law, the normal rule is that the loser of a case pays the other side’s legal costs, the costs that the other side has paid its solicitors, barristers and other advisers in pursuing its claim. A core legal skill is to be able to scan facts and identify the issues before applying the law to resolve those issues. The claimant would, of course, also have to pay the claimant’s lawyer’s costs, whether the claimant is an individual or a company. Discovery used to be one of the most expensive steps of the litigation process, as lawyers considered many documents, perhaps thousands, to see whether they were relevant to the dispute.
