How the Law is Enforced
If you have read our section on The Law, you may now know a bit more than you did about peoples' legal rights and responsibilities. We certainly hope so - that is what we are here for! But it is not much use knowing what the legal position is if you don't know how it can be enforced. That is what this section is about. Study both and you might save money by becoming so much more knowledgable about how the legal system works.
Before you start getting involved in litigation, you would be very wise to get professional advice. Don't just assume you have figured out the position for yourself (by studying this site for example) and jump in. There are a lot more ins and outs to the law than you would think, and it is quite impossible to cover them all in a site like this.
In addition, knowledge is only part of it. Take football as an analogy: we all know how to play it, but would we expect to win (or even scrape a draw) if we took the field against premiership opposition? In litigation, the opposition is almost always going to be an expert lawyer, so get one yourself.
When you first consult your lawyer, don't expect all the answers right away. He is an expert, not a magician. He should listen to you explaining the situation in your own words, and he will then give you a rough idea of whether you are going along the right lines and what your rights and options are. It is, if you like, only a 'gut reaction' at this stage. A properly considered opinion can really only come at the next stage, when he has gathered all the relevant information. Any lawyer who purports to advise you definitively before he has all the information is best avoided.
Generally speaking it's not a good idea to just go ahead and sue somebody without first going through certain steps, in particular telling the person you are going to sue so he has a chance to settle up without having to go to court. If you do proceed without taking these steps the judge might well take a dim view. Details of precisely what you should do are in this section.
There are some - this section tells you about them. You may find they have certain advantages, notably that they tend to be less adversarial than litigation.
The enforcement of legal rights and responsibilities is undertaken in our system by Courts and Tribunals of various types. There are an awful lot of courts and tribunals about and the array can be very confusing. So the first thing we need to figure out is which of them to use.
When you have figured that out the next step is to get the case started (or 'issued' as it is called in the lawyers' jargon). Starting a case is almost always an exercise in pure paperwork. The day when the parties actually arrive in court to argue out the case is much later on. So you now need to read about how to start a claim.
Having got off the starting blocks, what happens next? It would be nice to think we just get an appointment to go to court to argue it out once and for all, but unfortunately things are rarely that straightforward in our courts system. As a general rule there is always some more (and frequently a lot more) paperwork to get through in the meantime. So read this section for help in getting through the maze.
If you have pursued your case to a conclusion and you have won, congratulations. How do you go about enforcing the judgment in your favour? Or what if you have lost? What should you expect then? This section answers all those queries.
If you are like the vast majority of people you will have used a lawyer. Lawyers don't come cheap. If you have won the case you might have been awarded legal costs, or if you have lost you might have been ordered to pay them. When the judge ordered them to be paid, he might have specified a figure. If he did not there is a complicated system that assesses precisely how much must be paid in costs, and this section explains it.
If you have lost and you don't like it, or if you have won and your opponent doesn't, there is almost always a higher court to appeal to. And another after that, and another.... In theory you could go on appealing for years. In practice though appeals get harder the higher up the hierarchy you get. This section attempts to explain away all the complexities of the appealing business.
The Law - Enforcing it - What it costs - Find a lawyer