Last week, we sent a chasing letter
to a county court to be met with the following message – (which wasn’t tailored
to the festive season, incidentally):-
“This email box is accessed daily.
In accordance with HMCS policy, your email will be dealt with or
responded to within ten working days following the date of receipt.”
That translates to as many as 16 calendar
days during most of the year and probably three or four weeks at the turn.
The purpose of the letter was to
enquire why we still haven’t had any response to a request for default judgment
that was filed three weeks ago.
Yes, I know about Christmas, but this
should have been dealt with more than a week before. Sadly, the experience of
this particular court as well as others – is that dealing with routine matters
inside a fortnight is considered a noble aspiration.
I distinguish routine matters because
if it’s more than mechanical, you just know that it will take far longer than
this with the explanation (sorry, expectation that you will work it out for
yourself) that it was more complicated than the norm.
Routine communications needn’t take a
fortnight or more to process. There
shouldn’t be any acceptance in this industry that it may take that long.
The Court Service has done this for
years. I remember the prolonged cris-de-coeur from another local court
years ago to the effect that they were three weeks behind and we should bear
with them. It became their service standard for years.
Similarly, my first firm used to have
a much admired associate or legal executive whose reputational headline was
that he had a permanent typing backlog of three weeks. People thought that was
impressive.
Quite a few lawyers have woken up
now. Insurers haven’t because they don’t
want to. Delays mean that you hang on to
money and earn interest for longer.
The Court Service still doesn’t get
it. Our chums in Salford seem to have
settled down into a routine 10 day “backlog” with the expectation that the
entire civil litigation world will come to see that as the benchmark. This is
without complications such as those I wrote about in To me, to you
As I observed to that local court
manager years ago, if it is possible to work consistently x days or weeks
behind schedule then you ship in extra resource for x days or weeks, get back
up to speed and stay on the pace.
The likelihood is that will never
happen because there is an ingrained, deep-rooted philosophy that these turnaround
times are acceptable. So, if they ever get these services up to speed, the
majority (not all) within the system will coast until their backsides are once
again on fire and they are falling short.
There’s a New Year resolution for you
HM Court Service – excepting, excusing and acknowledging the minority of
conscientious stars - buck it up!
Happy New Year.
No comments:
Post a Comment