Suggested improvements to case management orders

Look, we know what you’re up to. They are intended to be soul-destroyingly tedious – perhaps you have some sort of vested interest in treatment of aneurysms, perhaps you just hate lawyers, perhaps you want to make us all quit.  Or you read Catch 22 but completely missed that the bits where the bureacracy intended to serve people in their jobs ends up hampering them or took those as a call to arms rather than a satirical barb. Who knows?

Every time I open up a blank one, I feel like this

But form designers, you can strive even harder to ruin the day of anyone who has to complete the things.  Here are just five suggested additions

1.  Code numbers.  To protect anonymity, from now on, the name of any individual or party, including Judges, social workers, experts, lawyers, will have its own unique 26 number code. That code will not be consistent with that used for that person in any other case, and will be changed every 27 days for security purposes.  This will result in clauses like this   97233861182418618690207116900  shall file and serve their assessment of 18y790393700122 and 10089279972291772  as carers for 11909078667672291 and 492280661512982 . Much better for everyone

2.  Section 2 of the order will now require that the author complete in handwriting (to prevent cutting and pasting) every section of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act that does not apply to the case, even where the case involves a perfectly routine pregnancy.

3. Section 9 of the order requires the author to give two examples of irony in literature (such examples must not have been replicated in any other order lodged in that Court. The Court will not divulge in advance whether the example has been previously used)

4. In the event that any of the parties has ever been on holiday to a foreign country, indicate whether you have written to that country to see whether they have any intention to intervene in these proceedings.

5. Again for security purposes, a code system like those Captcha things on websites is introduced when lodging the form. The computer system will give fourteen words and the advocate lodging the form must identify which View from the President the words are a quotation from.

[I might, perhaps, just perhaps, have drafted too many Case Management Orders this month]