The Year We Got Mitchelled

The rather dramatic denouement to the Mitchell libel trial - or rather trials, because Mitchell was suing News Group Newspapers, and was being sued by PC Rowland - brings to an end a saga that has not only involved stroppy MPs, leaky police and massive legal bills, but has also led indirectly to what any English civil litigation lawyer is going to remember as The Year We Got Mitchelled.

So why has a short exchange outside the gates to Downing Street had such an effect on English civil legal practice? Well, to understand that we have to go back about 15 years, to the Woolf Reforms and the introduction of the Civil Procedure Rules, aka the CPR.

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