We are pleased to announce a significant expansion in the coverage offered by The Weekly Law Reports.

Since it entered circulation in 1953, The Weekly Law Reports has provided the most up to date and comprehensive generalist coverage of law-changing judgments in England and Wales.

Over the past 63 years, the volume of cases entering the English justice system has grown relentlessly. There is far more law to keep abreast of in 2016 than ever before. As law reporters, this presents us with a host of challenges.

ICLR’s mission and purpose is to continually monitor the development of the common law through the courts and report those cases that appear to us as having future authoritative value. We are incredibly selective in our approach – the vast majority of judgments given each year do not, in our opinion, merit fuller reporting. However, we have observed a clear increase in the number and variety of cases that practitioners in particular wish to access.

To address the demand for wider and deeper coverage of case law, we have developed an expansion to The Weekly Law Reports. This expansion is the first and only material change that has been applied to configuration of the WLR since it was established in the 1950s.

Users of The Weekly Law Reports will be familiar with the three volumes the series consists of:

Volume 1 cases cover procedural matters and points of law of general interest.

Volumes 2 and 3 contain cases that are of greater long term significance which will subsequently appear in a revised version (with additional material) in The Law Reports.

We are now pleased to introduce Volume 4.

For a case to merit reporting in volume 4, it must:

(1)  illustrate the application of established rules or principles to particular factual situations in such a way as to be of practical value to counsel or solicitors; or

(2)  helpfully bring together and summarise the established rules or principles applicable in a particular area of law; or

(3)  articulate principles to guide the exercise of judicial discretion conferred by statute, rules of court or the inherent jurisdiction; or

(4)  indicate the level of general damages awarded in particular factual situations in a way which may assist courts assessing damages in similar cases; or

(5)  indicate the level of sentence to be imposed for particular offences in a way which may assist courts sentencing for similar offences

To minimise production costs and to ensure that we are able to publish these additional reports as soon after judgment as possible, cases reported in volume 4 will not be published in print. Volume 4 cases are available, along with those reported in volumes 1 to 3, on ICLR Online, WestlawUK and LexisLibrary.

The development of the fourth volume marks a significant milestone for The Weekly Law Reports and ICLR’s general reporting capability.

For more information, contact us on enquiries@iclr.co.uk