Officially released this week, the book is authored by Herbert Smith Freehills’ partners Jason Betts and Damian Grave along with former partner and now group general counsel of ANZ Ken Adams and details the evolution of class actions across the country.

A number of other class actions experts from Herbert Smith Freehills are contributing authors of the book; they include partners Ante Golem, Cameron Hanson, Gregg Rowan and Christine Tran, executive counsel Helen Mould and Leah Watterson, and special counsel Guy Narburgh.

The Honourable James Allsop AO, Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, who provided a foreword for the book, said during the launch that “this practitioner’s guide to the proverbial galaxy of class actions is an accessible and sophisticated navigation tool, with detailed analysis of case law and clear identification of areas of unresolved and conflicting law”.

“The sustained interest in this area is perhaps unsurprising given the multiple and public interest aims motivating the introduction of these regimes. The authors tactfully explore the challenging intersections of these public aims and the private interests of class actions stakeholders that arise in the day-to-day conduct, management and resolution of class action litigation,” he added.

Speaking to Lawyers Weekly ahead of the book launch on Wednesday (9 February), Damian Grave and Jason Betts revealed what the class actions space would look like over the next year as we enter a post-pandemic market.

Mr Grave said that “the Australian class actions landscape has changed considerably since the first edition in 2005, with courts giving consideration to a range of innovative class action issues that have driven changes”.

“There has been continual evolution and innovation over many years in the Australian class action landscape. This has occurred not only through case law, but also through the development of practice and procedure applied by the parties. The only certainty has been that change has occurred and will continue to occur in the future,” he said.

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“Practitioners working in this area need to be aware of the complex and nuanced history underlying the various statutory provisions across the class action regimes. There are also many unwritten aspects of class action practice and procedure which have been developed and applied by plaintiffs and defendants over many years.”

Mr Betts added that the volume of class actions since the first edition was released had increased dramatically – and the courts have evolved to keep up.

“An enduring theme of the book is that the practice of class actions is not an area for those that look for certainty or predictability. In the decade since the last edition, the courts have [consistently] employed new and evolving case management techniques that are designed to address emerging problems in the practice of class actions, and that were certainly not predicted when the regime commenced,” he said.

“Not only can judges of the court take different approaches depending on the needs of the case, jurisdictions can take different views on the appropriateness of those techniques, meaning that class action litigation is a constantly evolving intersection of practice and doctrine, where it is truly the case that ‘one [size] does not fit all’.”

The class actions space has also been impacted by greater public attention and other economic changes, added Mr Betts.

“In recent years class actions have captured much more of the attention of the general public and, perhaps as a result, significantly greater political scrutiny. The biggest change is the closer emphasis that it now placed on debating the social utility of class actions, and testing whether the hundreds of millions of dollars associated with class action settlement are finding an appropriate balance between returns to aggrieved group members on the one hand, and revenue for class action promoters on the other,” he said.

“There have also been major economic changes, including increasing regulation of third-party funders, which may steadily impact the types and profitability of class actions that are brought; and the dislocation of insurance markets responsive to class action risk, including the part-evacuation of the securities class action insurance from the Australian market.”

In terms of other trends to look out for in class actions this year, Mr Grave said that legislative reforms and jurisdictional issues would be front of mind for lawyers in this space.

“We will likely see further tightening in the litigation funding market with funders looking more closely as to what type of matters they will fund. There may also be some divergence arising from different approaches between the Australian jurisdictions on particular issues, such as orders for contingency fees which at this time are only available to be made in Victoria,” he said.

“We should also expect to see a range of possible legislative reforms continue to feature prominently in the public debate, and these mooted reforms will continue to generate controversy with participants in the class action landscape.”