This book has arisen out of a research project I have undertaken as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford, funded by the Legal Education Foundation. A key insight that I garnered from interviews with civil justice stakeholders as part of my empirical data collection was the relative lack of knowledge about class actions in England and Wales. For some, this was a result of the perceived neglect of civil procedure in English universities in contrast to places like Australia, Canada and the United States, where it is more foundational to legal education. Others took a more socio-cultural perspective, observing that even among academics, let alone the proverbial person on the street, much knowledge about class actions comes from popular media, whether television and film or the mainstream news, which has contributed to the impoverished understanding of the legal vehicle. Whichever the cause(s), a common refrain among stakeholders was that one of the major challenges for reform in the area is this fundamental lack of knowledge. One senior stakeholder went so far as to suggest that, at first instance, nothing would do more for collective access to justice than tackling this gap. It is my hope, then, that a book of this nature will be useful for those seeking to learn more about class actions and their benefits for access to justice. This approach aligns well with the growing recognition that ‘access to justice’ research needs to be more self-reflexive and incorporate its own central tenets: the research itself needs to be accessible. Too often this is ironically not the case. That is why I have chosen this format, and I have sought, to the best of my ability, to write in a clear and accessible manner. Given the somewhat technical language of the subject matter, this has at times proven to be a challenge, but I hope that a good balance has been struck between appealing to readers with previous familiarity and those who may not know much about the topic at hand.