Professor W. Hamilton Bryson is the preeminent master and legal scholar on Virginia Civil Procedure.
In addition, magistrates serve as judicial officers with authority to issue various types of processes.
However, Virginia never adopted the system of code pleading proposed by David Dudley Field II to abolish the forms of action.
This simple procedure was slowly extended over the next two centuries to one kind of action after another in piecemeal fashion.
Thus, Virginia's unique system of "motion pleading" gradually supplanted the forms of action and traditional common law procedure.
By that point in time, the Virginia motion for judgment had so thoroughly replaced the forms of action that no one missed them when the statutory authorization for their use was deleted in 1954.
Several kinds of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are available in Virginia, including what is known as a "summary jury trial".