The overall increase is £60 in asylum cases or £73 in immigration cases, in spite of the fact that, on the Ministry of Justice’s own estimation, the Reform Procedure is likely to require, on average, about 8 hours additional work, much of which will be preparation of the ASA. Skeleton arguments are not expected to be full written arguments, but instead are intended to provide the framework within which oral submissions will be made, and should be as short as the nature of the case permits. If you don’t file a skeleton argument, you’ll probably aggravate the judge. Don't switch to "Sally Jones" or "Jones".Skeletons are usually filed with the court the day before the hearing.Also, they should be exchanged with the other parties due to appear at the hearing, the day before.
Make the judge's job easier.Even for short hearings (20 minutes), a skeleton argument will assist the judge prepare for the hearing. Don't switch to another reference and switch back to the previous reference later.This is so that it is easy to refer to specific parts of the skeleton at the hearing, if you need to. This was the case whether the case was being funded privately or by Legal Aid. To address this, the Ministry of Justice has just issued The Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020, to take effect on 08 June 2020. They include:Some courts require them to be filed two days before the hearing, or even more. You usually agree a time that they will be sent, and then send them at that time.
The general guidelines are:If the other party does not prepare a skeleton argument, it's a good idea to hand them a copy of yours outside court.The investment of time you make in a skeleton argument saves everyone time.If it covers what it should, it allows the judge to be better prepared for your hearing.If they then tell the judge they only just received it outside court, remind the judge that they either:Drafting one will also force you to think through your case, and how you are going to say things in court.Most courts require the skeleton arguments to be filed by 10.00am the day before the hearing. He said this:It takes years to master the art of preparing good quality skeleton arguments.
Until the Reform Procedure, however, the FTTIAC standard direction was for any skeleton argument to be served 5 working days before the appeal hearing. It provides for a single fixed fee to cover both preparation and appeals during the Reform Procedure.As with many of our colleagues, we at 10KBW very much regret the need to adopt this policy, and feel it is essential to explain the context for our decision.Regrettably, that does not resolve the problem, because, in spite of the considerable amount of extra work required by the Reform Procedure, the new Legal Aid fixed fee represents only a very slight increase on the previous total available for preparation+appeal. The skeleton arguments and Notices of Appeal in a case are rarely seen. They are mostly filed by email to email addresses designated by the particular court.Our IP and technology disputes work lets us see first hand how other parties cases don't go to plan and can fall apart at different stages.But there's more to it.
Along with (so far) the immigration teams of 20 other sets of barristers’ chambers, the immigration team at 10KBW has adopted the following policy: Other than in exceptional circumstances, each member of the immigration team of the chambers listed below will not accept instructions under the ‘Reform Procedure’ to prepare an ‘Appeal Skeleton Argument… You should write to the other side the day before (or earlier) and ask them when they will be ready to exchange skeleton arguments, once you have completed yours and you are ready to exchange them. There are three main reasons for this: the ASA may sometimes result in no hearing taking place; even if there is a hearing, it will not be possible to guarantee that any barrister who drafts an ASA will be available for the hearing, which may take place some weeks after the ASA submission date; and, due to the time-lag between the ASA submission date and any hearing that does take place, the barrister who appears at the hearing will often need to draft another skeleton argument to take account of the Home Office’s response to the ASA and any further evidence or developments in the case that may have transpired since the ASA was drafted.Furthermore, the effect of the Reform Procedure has been to widen existing funding gaps in legally-aided cases and create an additional funding shortfall.