In my work as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, I have noticed there is a concept that is consistently argued about at every stage of negotiations including after a transaction closes – this is the concept of “Working Capital” in business transactions. The trouble with the term is its malleability in definitions: it is an accounting term, used by those who operate businesses, but drafted in legal documents by lawyers who understand neither. Let’s start at the beginning.

In the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI), ChatGPT has emerged as a powerful language model capable of understanding and generating human-like text. While its capabilities are impressive, (I used it to write the opening sentence and title), I don’t believe that it will be replacing legal professionals.

It’s safe to say that civil litigators (and subsequently their clients) are all having issues involving court wait times and backlog. Many reforms have been put into place to improve this backlog including: the movement towards alternative dispute resolution; removing matters for delay and the movement of matters to be heard in writing. While some of these initiatives have certainly been helpful, I would propose something that is more radical – a reformation of the Rules of Civil Procedure, starting with the strategic removal of motions with a better tool for triage. (I note that this article deals mainly with civil litigation and does not deal with the family or criminal contexts). In the grand scheme of procedural reform, motions should be the first to be changed because of the delay, cost, and ultimate unfairness they create in our system.

Mareva injunctions, colloquially known as "freezing orders," have long been a powerful tool in litigation. The effect of these orders is to freeze bank accounts, put charges on title for property, and notice to all creditors that there is a Mareva in place. These orders were meant to be particularly useful in situations where there is an urgent, genuine risk that a party might dissipate assets and flee the country in the event of fraud or avoiding judgment. They are brought ex parte – with little or no notice to the responding party – and should be used and subsequently granted on rare occasions. However, there is a growing concern that Mareva injunctions are being granted too frequently and many times, on the basis of insufficient or even no concrete evidence. The implications of this are frightening.