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It is good news for those waiting to move forward with general court cases such as building disputes or debt actions, as non-emergency civil cases start to get the green light to be dealt with by conference call.

Throughout the current pandemic, the Sheriff Principal of Tayside, Central and Fife has been keeping practitioners up to date with plans for the operation of the Sheriff Courts in relation to civil business.

Until now those have by and large been measures aimed at ensuring that in emergencies there is access to the courts and that there is a structure as to what should happen with cases that do not fall into that category.

Our court solicitors at Macnabs have been "appearing" in emergency civil cases where necessary and justifiable for our clients throughout via conference calls with our Sheriffs.

We have now however had the first few "appearances" in non-emergency civil cases where hearings had previously been scheduled for the beginning of June. These have also been by conference calls - and we have been very pleasantly surprised by how efficient that has been.

The most recent communication from our Sheriff Principal has confirmed that the civil court service in the Sheriff Courts is going to start opening up in phases, much like the wider move out of lockdown, over the next few weeks starting in the middle of June. It has also been confirmed that for the time being, almost all civil court cases will have hearings dealt with by way of conference calls.

Our experience thus far has been that conference calls are much more efficient. There is no waiting at court for a case to call in amongst many others - that saves solicitors' time and accordingly saves clients' money. When the case calls our solicitors at Macnabs can have (multiple) display screens in front of them with complete and instant access to our comprehensive electronic file on the case, whether we are working from home or in the office.

This has been standard practice in many Employment Tribunal and Commercial Court cases for a few years now and is possibly a long overdue development in Sheriff Court civil cases. We suspect that once the current crisis has passed this is going to be the "new normal". If that is to be the case it is to be welcomed and can only be of benefit to clients in speeding up court cases and reducing costs.