medsecslave, if you're concerned about a magistrates court case, you ought not to know what happens with Crown Court cases !.It is very common for counsel not to know what case they are doing the next day in the Crown Court and only see the brief (papers) for the first time on the day before the hearing; sometimes after 4pm on that day. That's because a) counsel can't predict, to the day, when their current case will finish.It may overrun and they then can't do the other case on the day b) a lot, most indeed, of cases are not given an exact fixed date for hearing long in advance but are put in a general list of cases which are to be heard in a certain period and may be called on on any day in that period , and on short notice. The result is that a lot of cases end up with counsel who was not originally instructed in that case. In the 'trade' these briefs are known as 'returns' A 'late return' is one that arrives with counsel late in the day before, one of the 4pm and later ones, and is particularly inconvenient for counsel, but they get used to preparing cases well into the evening, it happens so often.