A note from the Chair for the October 2021 Class Actions e-Bulletin

Dear fellow IBA Class Action Committee members,

I trust you have all managed to keep safe and well during these extraordinary times.  With light at the end of this Covid-19 tunnel, we hope to start seeing you all in person again in 2022. Of particular note is next year’s Litigation Committee Conference (TBA) and the IBA’s Annual Conference currently scheduled for 30 October to 4 November 2022 in Miami.

Welcome to probably our last Newsletter in this style and thank you to those who have contributed the articles. Next year we will be significantly revamping our publications.  We want to publish more regularly and on different platforms and you will hear more about that soon.

As to the newsletter, we are looking at having instead a quarterly ‘Global Class Actions Update’ which will have contributions from all of you on class action developments in the Asia Pacific, Africa, Arab, Europe, Latin America and Northern America regions.  It will also look at Class Actions across many categories including mass tort and consumer; shareholder claims; data breach and privacy; anti-trust and competition; employment and climate change; and ESG. It will be a more comprehensive publication with much broader coverage.

We really want this Committee and its publications to embrace and allow participation by all those involved in class actions around the world and in the various areas of law where class actions arise.  It is indeed one of the fastest moving and most exciting areas in law and promises to continue that way for years to come.

Importantly, we are currently looking for representative members in each jurisdiction to help us monitor local developments in real time and feed relevant information through to the Committee and its publications. We are also exploring with other Committees the opportunities to collaborate in areas of common interest and to hold joint webinars and ‘live’ sessions including at next year’s Annual Conference. If you are interested and keen to be involved and participate, please contact us.

All the best over this year’s approaching festive season which hopefully will be bigger and better than last years, and we look forward to seeing you ‘live’ in 2022.

Kind regards,

Robert Johnston

Chair, IBA Class Actions Committee

robert.johnston@jws.com.au