Year in Review 2024: Key trends shaping commercial litigation
The Solomonic Year in Review 2024 reveals the key trends in commercial litigation, including the top performing law firms, claim volumes in major courts and shifts in sector activity.
Multi-award winning litigation data and analytics platform Solomonic, has released its highly anticipated Year in Review 2024, offering in-depth insights into the state of civil litigation in England and Wales. This year’s report analyses data from over 7,400 new claims issued in the civil high courts and the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), revealing major trends, sector activity shifts and the evolving risks facing law firms and businesses.
Comparing 2024 to any of the previous four years has been an interesting exercise. Unlike the preceding years, it has not been marked by a major seam of new cases centred around a national or international crisis, scandal or event.
This is not to say that the year was uneventful. It included a landslide victory for the Labour Party in the election and their subsequent halting of proposed legislation to address the impact of the PACCAR decision on litigation funding. It also saw some major decisions including the Appeal Court decision on secret commissions, which may yet deliver a host of new claims against vehicle finance companies. Major events continued to dominate the news with the ongoing Russo-Ukraine war, the Post Office scandal inquiry and the final report of the Grenfell inquiry all holding the potential for further claims to emerge.
“The data tells a fascinating story,” said Edward Bird, CEO of Solomonic. “This is the fourth edition of our annual report, and each year we uncover new insights that shed new light on how civil litigation in the English High Court is evolving.”
As such, the year revealed the underlying ‘business as usual’ activity of the English civil High Court, although in some cases the data suggests it is not business as usual, with declines in some of the UK’s most important first instance courts.
“Our half-year report highlighted caution as a key watchword, and as the year closed, no single issue emerged as a major driver of new disputes. However, this doesn’t mean the industry was quiet - 2024 saw the highest volume of active claims in recent years,” added Bird.
As litigation risks evolve, lawyers are increasingly concerned about class actions, ESG, regulatory issues and, of course, artificial intelligence. Yet our data consistently shows that commercial contract disputes remain the most common dispute type year after year.
Unsurprisingly, the banking, construction and insurance sectors continue to be busy, whilst very high value opt-out claims continue to land in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). Although the decision to settle by the class representative in the interchange fees dispute and the decision of the Tribunal against the claimant in the Justin Le Patourel v BT Group PLC case may dampen enthusiasm for new class actions, this is something we will only be able to assess in the year ahead.