In this research, an attempt was made to compare the operation of two county court procedures - "open court" trial and the more informal small claims procedure - as part of an exercise intended to monitor the effects of the rise in the small claims limit to £3,000. This comparison was based primarily upon the views expressed in interview by some 350 litigants, all of whom had been involved in actions within the £1,000 to £3,000 band, evenly divided between the two procedures. In these two samples, there was a good spread of different kinds of litigant - plaintiffs and defendants, business and lay, regular users of the court and first timers, and winners and losers.

At least three quarters of the litigants who had been involved in small claims could be described as content with the way their cases had been handled in court and expressed enthusiasm about the extension of the small claims jurisdiction. Those who had experienced "open court" trials, however, expressed very different sentiments. 40 per cent of these litigants viewed "open court" adjudication as an inappropriate and disproportionately expensive way of resolving these kinds of disputes. Few could be described as having any fondness for formal legal procedures. Three times as many of these litigants said that they had been acutely anxious about the outcome of the hearing than was the case with the small claims litigants. The graphic descriptions that were provided, particularly by individuals bringing or defending actions on their own account, of the worry and distress they had endured were not paralleled in the interviews with small claims litigants. No matter what criterion of litigant satisfaction was adopted, the small claims regime came out ahead - and by a wide margin. There was widespread support within both groups of litigants for the adoption of informal methods for resolving disputes at this level.

The contrast in the role of lawyers at the two kind of hearings was also striking. Whereas less than a third of the litigants in the small claims sample were legally represented at hearings (a proportion that has risen with the increase in the small claims limit), almost two thirds of litigants at "open court" trials had lawyers. Lawyers were to a much greater extent in charge in full court hearings than in small claims where they tend to take a back seat. Unlike a small claims hearing, lay people who represent themselves at "open court" trials are likely to find themselves out of their depth.

While very few litigants in small claims said that the action threatened their livelihoods, the same could not be said of all litigants in the other group. The application of the "no cost" rule in small claims is crucial, and, unless litigants are supported by funds from an external source, it is a much greater gamble to pursue civil actions by formal court procedures. The main reason is that, if unsuccessful, they may be saddled not only with having to pay their own legal bill but the other side's as well. Almost sixty per cent of the private individuals in the "open court" sample said that they had had to pay bills running into several hundreds of pounds. A few said they had had to pay out thousands.

The general conclusion drawn in this research is that not acceptable that legal costs should be greater than the money at stake in civil litigation. Although there are continuing problems that many litigants experience with the operation of the small claims regime - relating in particular to the absence of preliminary legal advice and to the enforcement of judgments - it can nonetheless be said that the rise in the small claims limit to £3,000 has, from the litigants' perspective, so far been achieved without serious difficulty or disruption. Few litigants in either sample could be said to regret the eclipse of "open court" trial and its increasing absorption into the expanded small claims regime.

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