Managing justice

On 22 March 2005 the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf handed down a new Protocol on the “Control and Management of Heavy Fraud and other Complex Criminal Cases” in England and Wales. It was issued on the same day that one of the longest running trials in British legal history, for alleged corruption in the tendering process for the London Underground Jubilee line extension, was abandoned after almost two years. The introduction to the Protocol states, “it is essential that the current length of trials is brought back to an acceptable and proper duration.”

The Protocol aims to provide flexible guidance for all cases that are estimated to take more than four weeks. Most cases, it says, should not last longer than three months but there is recognition that in “exceptional circumstances” they might extend beyond six months.