It may seem an odd question at a time when US policymakers are gearing up for FDR-style interventionalism on Wall Street, but what was wrong with leaving the market to settle the issue of costs in complex commercial litigation?

I ask because following the furore surrounding the collapse of BCCI creditors' case against the Bank of England back in November 2005, it became the widespread view among litigators and the judiciary that something must be done!

With broadsheet condemnation ringing in the profession's ears, a working party chaired by Mr Justice Aikens was set up in 2006, ultimately producing fairly uncontroversial recommendations the following year.

Said recommendations, which involved more proactive case-management and cutting back witness statements, were supposed to be tested between February and July this year. The idea was that this would stress-test the model and elicit feedback. Except, as became clear at the Legal Week Litigation Forum, feedback has been thin on the ground.

Where this takes the debate is unclear, although there is uninspiring talk of holding another summit to rake it all over again.

The point to all this seems hard to fathom. If, as was originally contended, the collapses of cases like BCCI and Equitable Life were genuine threats to the UK's position as a global dispute resolution centre, surely normal competitive pressures would have been able to restrain the excesses at the London Bar as the profession hustled to stop work going abroad. Alternatively, if there was actually a deeper need for fundamental reform of the system, then why didn't we get that, rather than a superficial shake-up of existing rules?

What was the point of this when, in the views of many, much of the problem is that judges don't use the case management powers they have? Others have questioned how parties are to ensure co-operation in a system built around an emotive, adversorial process.

The suspicion was that the whole post-BCCI debate was about a short-term pressure to be seen to have done something rather than an actual commitment to change, which isn't a very sound basis for reform.